Size Matters

• Tiles that are very large or very generate interest because of size alone. Very large ceramic tile on a floor can crack under foot traffic, but you can have as large a size as you can find on a wall. You can disperse sheets of different colors of tiny mosaic tiles, sold already mounted and spaced on large mesh-backed sheets. Large and small tiles can be mixed on a wall for interesting effects.
  
  

Textured and Sculptured Tiles

• On a floor, you're pretty much consigned to flat tiles, but on a wall, you can hang anything you can find. Home improvement stores and art shops offer all kinds of sculptured tiles, with raised material displaying everything from simple designs to the shapes of animals or intricate landscape scenes. These can be interspersed with flat basic tiles to frame it and provide a background. One popular technique is to border the whole thing in long narrow tiles made to resemble rope, vines, or wood.
  
  

Painting

• Ceramic tile can be painted as a kind of miniature mural, holding any design you want. If you intend to paint the tiles, use unglazed tiles, which hold paint much better than glossy finished tiles. Hang and grout the tiles, then use good oil paints to paint whatever images or designs you want on it, going right over both the tile face and the grout, making it all part of the same image. Let it cure for three days, then apply two or three coats of clear polyurethane to seal it.