I seem to be on a tile kick lately, with my posts in Shakhammer! Hi there, Susan Serra, CKD, talking kitchens.

I came across this post of a ceramic tile hood in Home Improvement Ideas. This one is particularly well done, I approve! Here are a couple of images of hoods that my clients have tiled. In both cases, they are the same style of hood. In both cases, the clients used small mosaic tiles, run straight across. Also, in both cases, the look of the kitchen was sort of Frenchy, froufrou, as I call it, with lots of decorative detailing.

The light colored hood is great. Simple and elegant, it makes sense. Unfortunately, I was not called in to look at the tile layout and selection for the darker colored hood before the tile man came. To me, the kitchen is Marie Antoinette and the hood is sort of Ralph Lauren.
There are two reasons for this. First, the mosaic tiles were put on the "square", run straight across. Secondly, and more important, the grout used was a light colored grout, accentuating the rectilinear lines, rather than creating a more subtle, rustic, look.

In this post, I talked about choosing the right grout color. This is a good example where a darker color grout would have been much better for the darker hood, IF the client wanted to put the mosaic tiles "on the square" rather than on the diagonal. Using a darker grout would have made that installation fine. Conversely, if they wanted a light colored grout, in their particular kitchen, the tiles should have been put on the diagonal. Mind your grout!