Tell Me About Travertine Bathroom Tile

[Anonymous]

We are gutting two (tiny) bathrooms in our (tiny) 1950s Colonial, and trying to decide on tile. We spent the entire day in the tile store and came to this conclusion: our choices are travertine, white subway tile, or some fake-looking ceramic tile that is supposed to look like stone. Travertine looks nicest to us, but we are concerned about maintenance (who knew you had to maintain tile?), wear, and having the bathrooms look dated in a few years. The fake "stone" ceramic tiles just looked so ... fake. And the subway tiles probably match the era of our house the best, but man, are they boring.

Does travertine actually require maintenance? Was the salesman right that you have to have them re-filled after 6-10 years, which seems pretty soon? Will they look dated in 5 years? And is there anything else we should know about them?

[Anonymous]

boy i'd love some answers to these questions too. i already did my master in travertine and it looks gorgeous. i love it but already I am at a loss re how to clean cause all of the cleaning stuff i used to use says do not use on natural stone. help!

[Anonymous]

Really? Nothing good or bad to say about travertine? Literally half of the tile store was stocked with it, so I figured lots of people had it.

[Anonymous]

Not only does travertine require maintenance, but it's an ecological nightmare. If you ever gave even a moment's thought to being green, think about the process of mining it, and then shipping it halfway around the world.

[Anonymous]

After we put travertine in our master bedroom/bath addition another contractor said that travertine is really bad for bathroom applications, especially in showers (and we have an all tile shower). Neither the tile store nor the major design/build firm we used told us this. We figure we will have to spend a minor fortune in about 5 years to rip it all out and re-do the bathroom, which was quite expensive in the first place.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not only does travertine require maintenance, but it's an ecological nightmare. If you ever gave even a moment's thought to being green, think about the process of mining it, and then shipping it halfway around the world.

It would probably be helpful to OP if you gave some more green alternatives.

[Anonymous]

We have travertine tile in our master bathroom and we love it. It's pretty low maintenance and it looks really nice. Our bathroom walls are a burnt orange color and the travertine tiles on the floor are beige with swirls of brown, orange, red and yellow (muted tones) and it looks great. It costs a bit more but we have no regrets.