Are Square Tiles Outdated?
Are Square Tiles Outdated?
Short answer: no. Square tiles are not outdated, and if anything they are having a moment right now, back on backsplashes, shower walls and kitchen floors after a decade of subway tile dominating almost every renovation photo. What actually dates a tile job is rarely the shape. It is the grout colour, the layout, and the size choice underneath it.
Are Square Tiles Outdated? The Short Answer
Square tile never really left. It just spent a few years standing behind subway tile at the front counter. Designers are now calling square the more versatile of the two shapes, symmetrical, easy to repeat, and forgiving of almost any finish. We install a lot of it, and the jobs that look dated five years later almost never come down to “square tile, ugh.” They come down to a grout colour nobody thinks about until the job is done.
Why Square Tile Never Actually Left
Symmetry is the whole story here. A square tile reads the same from every angle, which is exactly why it pairs so easily with checkerboard, stripe and herringbone-adjacent layouts that rectangular formats fight against. Homeowners who ask us to “make it feel current” almost always end up choosing square over subway once they see a sample board next to each other.
We have kitchens we tiled a decade ago in 4×4 square that still photograph well. Rectangular subway from the same era, especially in a bright white with grey grout, is the one clients now ask us to rip out. Shape held up. Colour choice did not.
Square vs Subway vs Rectangular: What Homeowners Are Actually Asking For
Subway tile carries a strong reputation for durability and easy cleaning, and that reputation is earned. But it also carries a directional look, long horizontal lines that push a room in one direction. Square breaks that up. Rooms feel calmer, less “hallway,” when the tile stops pulling the eye sideways.
Rectangular still wins for making a narrow bathroom or galley kitchen look longer. That part of the old advice is still true. For anywhere the goal is a grounded, settled feel instead, square is the better call, and it is the shape we get asked for most on new shower and backsplash jobs this year.
Material matters as much as shape in this comparison. Porcelain, ceramic, glass and natural stone all come in square format now, so the shape decision does not lock a homeowner into one look. A glass square in a kitchen backsplash reflects light differently than a matte porcelain square on a shower floor, and clients who assume “square tile” means one specific finish are usually surprised by how much range sits inside that single format.
When Square Makes a Small Bathroom Look Bigger, Not Smaller
Big square format, 12×12 and up, fewer grout lines, more visual continuity across the floor. That combination reads larger, not busier. Small-format square, the 2×2 and penny styles, does the opposite job well: it adds texture in a shower niche or on a small accent wall without fighting the room’s proportions. Both are square. Neither is dated. The size decision is where a bathroom lives or dies.
What Actually Dates a Tile Job (It’s Rarely the Shape)
Grout colour ages a tile installation faster than anything else we touch. Bright white grout against a bright white square tile photographed beautifully in 2015 and now reads flat and clinical in almost every listing photo we see. Charcoal or a tone-matched grout on the same exact tile looks like it was installed last month.
Trend colours on the tile itself are the second culprit. Grey subway everywhere, greige everything, that specific cool-toned grey that dominated 2016 through 2019 renovations, that is the palette clients now call outdated, not the shape underneath it. Warm neutrals, terracotta, and deeper tone-on-tone combinations are what is replacing it heading into 2026.
What Tile Will Never Go Out of Style?
Natural stone, subway in a warm off-white, terra cotta, hexagon in a classic black-and-white pairing, zellige. All five keep coming back because none of them are colour trends, they are material and shape choices with centuries of use behind them. Square belongs on that list too, for the same reason: it is a format, not a palette, and formats age slower than colours do.
Penny tile deserves a mention here specifically because it is square in miniature. Its grout-heavy surface was originally a practical choice for bathroom floors, more grip underfoot, and that practical origin is exactly why it never fully disappears from renovation trend lists.
Are Square Tiles Coming Back in Style?
They are already back. Designers have been saying it since late 2024, and the material orders we place reflect it: square-format requests on backsplash jobs are up noticeably against this time two years ago. Subway still gets specified, but usually now as an accent, not the whole wall.
What changed is less about the tile and more about what people want a kitchen to feel like. Directional, busy layouts are giving way to calmer, more settled ones, and square tile is the easiest way to get there without a full renovation budget.
What Are the Trends in Tile for 2026?
Checkerboard layout, back in a big way. Stripe patterns using square and rectangular formats side by side. Tile drenching, running the same tile from floor to ceiling in a small bathroom, no break at the tub line. Textural finishes, hand-glazed and slightly irregular surfaces instead of the dead-flat gloss that dominated the last decade.
Terracotta is having its third or fourth revival depending how you count, and it works especially well against Vancouver Island’s older housing stock, where a warmer palette suits the wood trim and fir floors most of these homes were built around. None of these trends require abandoning square tile. Most of them are built on it.
What Are the Outdated Tile Colors?
Cool grey and greige, the specific shade that showed up on every spec-home flip between 2015 and 2020, is the one clients most often ask us to price out replacing. Bright white subway with stark white grout is close behind it. Both read as “the last renovation before this one” the moment a buyer walks through.
Warm neutrals are replacing them: cream, soft terracotta, warm greige with a hint of tan instead of blue undertone. The shift is subtle in photos and obvious in person, and it is the single fastest way to make an older tile job look current without touching the tile itself.
Layouts That Make Square Tile Look Current Right Now
Checkerboard needs almost nothing else to look intentional, a black-and-white or two-tone square laid on the diagonal or straight, done. Stripe layouts, alternating square and rectangular bands, give a backsplash movement without going full pattern-on-pattern. Both are labour we quote a little higher than a straight running-bond install, more cuts, more layout planning before the first tile goes down, and clients tend to accept that once they see the sample board.
Mixing square with a second shape, hexagon in a niche, subway as a border, is the move we get asked for most on shower jobs specifically. It reads custom without the cost of a full mosaic install.
Where Square Tile Works Best in a Vancouver Island Home
Kitchen backsplashes, hands down, are where we install the most square right now. Bathroom shower walls come next, especially in older Island homes where the original tile is small-format and dated in colour rather than shape, so a bathroom tile installation that keeps a similar square format but swaps the palette respects the house without a full gut renovation.
Floors are the trickier call. Large-format square holds up well in a mudroom or kitchen where traffic is heavy, but a smaller bathroom floor can feel busy in square once grout lines multiply. That is a conversation worth having before ordering material, not after. A kitchen tile installation gives more room to experiment with layout since the floor plan is usually larger and more forgiving of pattern.
What It Actually Costs to Update a Square Tile Job
Regrouting a backsplash or shower wall is the cheapest fix in this entire article, and most homeowners have no idea it is even an option until we say it out loud on a quote call. Colour change on existing grout runs a fraction of a full retile, usually a single day’s labour for an average kitchen backsplash, and it does not touch cabinetry, countertops, or plumbing.
Full retile is a different conversation entirely. Tear-out, substrate check, new tile, new grout: that adds up fast once demolition and disposal enter the quote. Square format tile itself is not pricier than subway or rectangular to buy. The labour difference comes from layout complexity, not the shape on the box. Checkerboard and stripe patterns take longer to lay out and cut than a straight running bond, and that shows up in the estimate regardless of which shape is going down.
Quick Diagnostic: Is Your Square Tile Actually Dated, or Just the Grout?
Cool grey or stark white grout on a white or cream tile: dated, and the cheapest fix on this list. Tile itself cracked, chipped, or grout crumbling at the edges: that is a structural problem regrouting cannot solve. Straight running-bond layout in a kitchen with more traditional cabinetry: a layout mismatch, not a tile problem, and sometimes solvable by re-setting the same tile in a different pattern instead of buying new material. Colour undertone reads distinctly blue or grey against warmer countertops and trim: that clash is doing more damage to the room’s age than the tile shape ever could.
Run through those four before booking a full retile. More than half the calls we get about “outdated” square tile end with a regrout quote instead, and the client keeps the tile they already have.
Resale and What Buyers Actually Notice
Buyers walking through an open house rarely clock tile shape at all. What they clock is colour temperature and whether the kitchen or bathroom photographs like the last decade or the current one. A square-format backsplash in a warm neutral with a tone-matched grout reads current in listing photos. The exact same shape in cool grey with white grout reads like a 2017 flip, and agents on the Island have told us as much more than once walking a property before it lists.
That is worth knowing before spending renovation budget chasing shape trends that were never really the issue. Square tile is not what ages a listing photo. The colour choices sitting on top of it are.
Is It Worth Replacing Square Tile Before It Looks Dated?
Not on shape alone. If the tile itself is in good shape and the only complaint is “it feels old,” regrouting in a warmer tone often solves the problem for a fraction of a full retile. We have talked more than one client out of a full kitchen tear-out once they saw what a grout colour change did to the same exact tile.
Replace it if the grout is failing, the tile is cracking, or the layout itself, not the colour, is what is dating the room. A straight running-bond backsplash in a kitchen that otherwise leans traditional can look flat next to newer cabinetry no matter what colour the grout is. That is a layout problem, and layout is the one thing regrouting cannot fix.
The Bottom Line
Square tile is not the problem in a dated kitchen or bathroom. Colour and layout almost always are. Before tearing anything out, it is worth getting an opinion on whether a grout change or a layout swap gets the room where it needs to be, sometimes it does, sometimes a full retile really is the answer, and either way that is a conversation we would rather have before demolition than after.
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Jordan Tile & Stone
Tile installation and repair across central Vancouver Island: Campbell River, Courtenay, Comox, Oyster Bay, Nanoose Bay, Parksville, Qualicum Beach and Nanaimo.
Phone: (250) 201-3891
Hours: Monday to Sunday, 7:00 am to 6:00 pm
Address: 4423 Patricia Rd, Oyster Bay, BC V9H 1B8