Beige, grey or taupe for your kitchen? Neutral colour tiles

The popularity of neutral colours also extends to tiles, which are very widely used in these shades to decorate every room in the home. The kitchen is no exception, as they offer a versatile, elegant, tasteful but not monotonous option for this room. The perfect backdrop to accompany or highlight modern, classical, rustic or shabby chic kitchen furniture.

Which are the neutral colours? Not only black and white, but also every possible shade of beige and grey, including the very fashionable "greige" colour called taupe. In other words, an array of lovely cold and warm, light and dark colours for kitchen floors and walls.

Here we will focus on beige and grey tiles for kitchens, which you can combine with furniture in shades of brown and beige, black and grey, or the ever-popular white. If you prefer attractive contrasts, on the other hand, you can team them up with orange, yellow, green or lilac.

Beige or taupe kitchen: the right tiles for you

In the kitchen, tiles are the ideal choice – tough and hygienic - for protecting the floor and walls, and especially the backsplash area behind sinks and hobs.

The choice of the type of tile for the kitchen is fundamental for creating an interior with a coordinated style and colour scheme. If beige is the underlying theme of the kitchen's design, tone-on-tone furnishings can be used to provide an attractive dialogue, without sharp colour contrasts, between the furniture and the tiled surfaces. Beige is just as effective as a background for white, dark or colourful furniture, which will become the fulcrum of the room.

The Natural and Rovere colours of the wood-effect porcelain stoneware tiles in the Vero collection by Marazzi are perfect examples of neutral coverings. These rectified plank tiles - in the 22.5x180 cm and 20x120 cm variants - offer a very precise reproduction of natural oak timbers, with all the veining and uneven fibre typical of oak, for installation with narrow joints on both floors and walls.

Art by Marazzi, on the other hand, offers large square tiles in porcelain stoneware in the 120x120 cm size inspired by Venetian Seminato, widely used in the latest interior design trends. Its White and Beige colours are enhanced by different sized chips or fragments of marble, creating variations in colour with a very natural effect. Art is available both with glossy surface and with natural finish for contemporary design schemes.

For a solid colour beige kitchen, Terratech offers the dusty Cannella and Senape colours, with an extremely natural look. Inspired by coloured earths and clays, Terratech combines outstanding technical characteristics - Bodyplus and StepWise™ – with surfaces that are soft to the touch and easy to clean, ideal for use in the kitchen.

Grey kitchen: the perfect tiles

The assortment of greys always amazes with its variety of shades, for tone-on-tone combination with furniture in darker or lighter greys or for attractive pairings with other colours. White first and foremost – for a white and grey kitchen –, but also with black or contrasting hues.

The stone and marble-effect ceramic tiles in the Magnifica collection by Marazzi offer slimline coverings in a maxi size (60x180 cm) inspired by exquisite stones and marbles. Ideal choices for covering kitchen walls include dark grey Moon or the warmer intermediate greige shades – Limestone Sand and Limestone Taupe –, suitable for a taupe kitchen. All Magnifica colours also come in the Mikado three-dimensional structure tiles, which enhance walls' luminous, tactile effect.

A more emphatic texture is provided by the stone-look fine porcelain stoneware slabs of the new Grande Stone Look Gris du Gent ultra large-size collection.

Inspired by the elegant grey marbles with copper colour veining typical of northern Europe, Gris du Gent is available both in the 6 mm thickness and XXL 160x320 cm size, and in the 12 mm thickness ideal for use as a worktop, kitchen table or backsplash, for a total look kitchen.