Hexagon mosaic tiles

A hexagon has no joint line that runs the length of the wall.

That is the working difference from a square. A square grid hands the eye two continuous lines to follow, so any drift shows along them; a hexagon interrupts the run at every chip, and small setting-out errors scatter instead of stacking into a visible line. The cost lands at the perimeter, where every cut is an angled cut and no waste piece fits the opposite side.

The shape also goes by hex tile and honeycomb tile. Recorded here are matt and soft polished sheets, from 250 × 290 mm to 282 × 325 mm, with no AS 4586 slip classification on file for any of them. On a shape with this many short edges the finish counts for as much as the tone — soft polished chips each carry a highlight, so those sheets read busier than the matt ones from the same distance.

For a kitchen, Kitchen hexagon tiles: 7 layout ideas and the numbers behind them works through both sheets recorded here, from a full splashback to a band between benchtop and cupboard, and counts the sheets rather than the hexagons.