Are you ready to learn how to add a beautiful tile accent wall yourself and save money? You’ve come to the right place! In this post, I’ll show you my beginner friendly step-by-step tutorial on how to tile an accent wall and turn your project into a fun and easy home update! I’ll share lots of pictures below to show you how to put wall tile up and help make your DIY tile installation process super easy.
After finishing the kitchen at the Hills House, we decided to do a pretty simple refresh of the guest bathroom. We removed the wallpaper and old vanity but left the shower and bathtub in place. They were still in great condition (unlike the shower and tub combo at the California Cottage). After painting, I decided that the wall behind the vanity would be the perfect place to turn into an incredible accent wall by adding decorative wall tile!
Note: This post may contain affiliate links, you can find more information in my disclosures here.
Accent wall tile
I used this beautiful decorative ceramic wall tile in our DIY walk-in shower remodel in the primary bathroom at the California Cottage and loved it so much:
When I saw that Bedrosians made the Cloe tile in baby blue, it quickly became of of my favorite tile accent wall ideas. I knew I had to use these accent tiles somewhere at the Hills House! If you haven’t seen these in person before, Bedrosians Cloe tile is a glazed ceramic wall tile with some texture but a smooth glossy finish and interesting variations in hues and tones.
The Bedrosians Cloe blue version is definitely more of a bold color than the white I used before but I think it’s the perfect bathroom accent wall tile to use behind our vanity. It’s perfect to create a focal point for our guest bathroom!
Materials
Tools
- Level
- Snap and score tile cutter
- Grout float
- Scissors
- Microfiber cloth
- Grouting sponge
- Small plastic cup
- Plastic spoon
Step 1: Planning tile layout
The first step when installing tile accent walls is to decide on the layout pattern, plan out and dry fit your tile layout before getting started. This is especially important if you have obstacles to keep in mind such as outlets, light fixtures or windows. I also recommend trying to avoid awkward cuts or tiny slivers of tile on the sides if possible to ensure the layout is nice and symmetrical.
Thankfully, even though this project was a pretty large tile accent wall, my bathroom accent wall tile didn’t require too much planning. That’s because the wall only had one visible obstacle: the light fixture. The other obstacles were the waterlines and the drain pipe. However, those would be hidden behind the vanity anyway so they weren’t something I was too concerned about.
Step 2: Installing the tile
Applying Musselbound
For this project, I decided to use Musselbound again. Musselbound is an adhesive tile mat that can be used instead of traditional mortar to attach tile to the wall. It reminds me of really strong double-sided sticky tape that replaces messy mortar with “peel and stick simplicity”. I think it’s such a great way to install tile, especially in small spaces! You can read more details about tiling with Musselbound here.
To tile the accent wall, I started by applying the Musselbound tile mat first:
I used a taping knife to smooth out the Musselbound and secure it to the wall:
Note that removing Musselbound from your wall is very difficult. During the shower remodel at our old house I had a couple small spots where I wanted to try removing Musselbound to reposition it and I ended up pulling off part of the waterproofing.
Here’s what my wall looked like once all the Musselbound was installed:
Once the Musselbound was installed, I figured out where I wanted the center line of the tile to be. On my wall, I decided to align the center line with the light fixture because the light fixture was not perfectly centered between the wall on the left and the wall on the right. I drew a level line that would help orient me while installing the tile later:
Applying the wall tile
Now it was time to start applying the tile to the feature wall. To do that, I exposed just enough of the Musselbound to get started on that first row.
I highly recommend taking your time with the first row and not rushing it! I believe the first row is the most important one because the rest of the tile accent wall will be based on on it. It needs to be perfectly level and placed correctly.
The shape of this tile is similar to traditional subway tiles so I decided to lay it in an offset pattern:
I pressed the tile on lightly at first before committing to a position. Once it’s pressed on, it’s very difficult to remove. To “activate” the stickiness of Musselbound and to adhere the tile onto the wall you have to press for 5 seconds on each tile. I used my grout float to evenly apply pressure.
Note: I wiped any dust/debris off each ceramic tile with a microfiber cloth before sticking it on the wall. This helped ensure I wouldn’t compromise the stickiness of the Musselbound with dust.
I was working in sections and was only exposing as much Musselbound stickiness as I would need for the section I was completing. Once I was done with a section, I used my taping knife to cut off the Musselbound protective film. This helped me make sure it didn’t start unraveling on its own and exposing additional sections of the stickiness while I was away.
Every so often I held up my level to make sure my rows were all still horizontally level:
I also made sure that my tiles were still properly centered on the light fixture:
Cutting tile
The cuts for this accent wall were really simple and I was tiling with ceramic tiles so I was able to use my favorite score and snap tile cutter again. It’s a lot less messy than a traditional wet saw (which I had to use on the porcelain tile in the hallway bathroom, yikes!) and you can use it indoors! This tool cuts tile by scoring it with a little wheel first. Then, pressure is applied with its foot to snap the tile. Here’s a quick visual of how it works:
I have more details on that saved in this Musselbound tiling tutorial.
I decided to install the tiles in the middle first so that I could get a few rows done without needing to cut any tile. That way, I could just cut tile for the edges in bulk later.
This made the cutting so much faster and more efficient!
The only somewhat tricky cuts were around the water lines. I ended up using a diamond drill bit like these ones to cut round holes into the accent tiles:
Also, this was not my prettiest Musselbound application, haha!
I think the cuts around the water lines worked out great!
I was really loving how this tile was turning out already, even without seeing the grout yet!
Isn’t the texture and variation in color of this Bedrosians Cloe tile blue so beautiful?
Each tile has a slightly different color, which really adds visual interest to this eye-catching accent wall!
Step 3: Grouting the tile accent wall
I like mixing up my grout in small batches. This allows me to take my time grouting and not have to rush it. I went with my favorite Mapei color Avalanche which is a clean and bright white.
First, I spread the grout with a grout float.
In the corners, I used the grout float first and then I also used my finger to push the grout in further where needed:
Then, I let it set per the instructions before wiping the excess off with a damp sponge.
Right at the end, I like wiping my wall tile accent wall with a microfiber cloth for a final clean up.
I’m always amazed that grouting makes such a huge difference!
Here is the tile accent wall before grout:
Here is the bathroom tile accent wall while I was grouting:
And here is the bathroom accent wall tile with grout:
The grout totally changes the look and completes it, I love these accent ceramic wall tiles so much!
Step 4: Caulking the edges
The final step for this ceramic tile accent wall was to finish the edges with caulk, this includes filling any:
- gaps between the wall tiles and the ceiling and
- gaps between the wall tiles and the adjacent walls
with caulk for a nice finish.
Finished Tile Accent Wall
Here is the finished blue tile accent wall:
I really love how well the white grout coordinates with the blue tile accent wall in bathroom! Tiling a single wall with decorative tiles was such a simple way to completely transform this bathroom and create a unique look.
I loved the look of this decorative wall tile so much, I actually decided to add some of this beautiful Bedrosians Cloe baby blue tile in the water closet. The water closet is part of this guest bathroom. I also cut and hung some IKEA LACK shelves:
Something like this could be a great option if you want to add tile somewhere in your house but don’t want to commit an entire wall to it. Maybe a small area like this between floating shelves, a kitchen backsplash or even a powder room with tile accent wall would be an option? There are so many different wall tile options and a small space might be ideal to try out different designs!
Here are a few more pictures of the accent tile bathroom wall before I installed the baseboards, vanity, mirror, medicine cabinet and light fixture:
Quick note: I didn’t install a whole new row of wall tiles at the very bottom because that part would be covered with 7 inch baseboards anyway. I just used some leftover tile as spacers instead of throwing them out!
Isn’t the variation in texture and color so pretty with this decorative accent wall tile? I think these wall tiles could also be a beautiful choice for a shower accent wall or even a living room tile accent wall or an entryway accent wall!
I really love how this tile accent wall turned out and I hope this tutorial how to tile an accent wall was helpful! Did it inspire you to consider accent walls with tile?
As always, feel free to reach out with any questions. I would love to hear if you end up trying this project yourself!
More about this guest bathroom
I’ll share a full reveal of this guest bathroom soon! The tile wall is definitely the star of the show though so I kept the rest of the bathroom in a pretty neutral color palette.
I also can’t wait to share a post on how I installed these hexagon floor tiles. It was a really easy and budget friendly bathroom project!
Tina
Leave a Reply