Marble and Travertine Mosaic Tile: Chip Size, Finish and How Many Sheets to Buy

Natural stone mosaic is sold by the sheet, not by the square foot. Every BROSMARBLE marble and travertine mosaic comes as a 12" × 12" mesh-backed sheet that covers 0.97 sq ft, so the order is simple: measure the wall, add 10% for cuts and breakage, divide by 0.97 and round up. A 21 sq ft kitchen backsplash needs 24 sheets. The harder decisions are the chip size, which decides where the tile can go, and the finish, which decides how it looks and feels. In our catalog the sheets run from $6.99 to $59.99, about $7.21 to $61.85 per square foot, with free shipping anywhere in the United States.

How many sheets of mosaic tile do I need?

Measure each surface separately in feet, multiply height by width, and add the surfaces together. Subtract large openings such as a window or a doorway, but not outlets or a shower valve; you will cut around those. Then:

1. Multiply the total by 1.10 to allow for cuts and breakage.
2. Divide by 0.97, the coverage of one 12" × 12" sheet.
3. Round up to the next whole sheet.

Two worked examples:

• Kitchen backsplash, 18 inches tall along a 14-foot run: 1.5 × 14 = 21 sq ft. 21 × 1.10 = 23.1 sq ft, divided by 0.97 = 23.8, so 24 sheets.
• Three-wall shower surround, a 5-foot back wall and two 3-foot end walls, all 8 feet high: 40 + 24 + 24 = 88 sq ft. 88 × 1.10 = 96.8 sq ft, divided by 0.97 = 99.8, so 100 sheets.

Every mosaic page on our site has a coverage calculator that runs this arithmetic for you, including the 10% allowance, and adds the result to your cart as a sheet count. Use it on the product you are actually considering, because the price per sheet varies a lot between formats.

There are two reasons to get the count right the first time. Natural stone varies between production runs, so sheets bought later may not match the first batch; that is why we advise buying the whole job at once. And our refund policy accepts full-order returns only, so a handful of spare sheets cannot be sent back on their own. The 10% allowance is the margin that covers both problems.

How many sheets of mosaic tile are in a box?

Our calculator counts 10 sheets to a box, which is about 9.7 sq ft. You do not have to buy whole boxes, though. The price is per sheet and you order the exact number of sheets you need. That matters on a small job: the 24-sheet backsplash above is 2.4 boxes, and rounding up to three full boxes would mean paying for six sheets you have no use for.

When you compare prices with other sellers, compare square feet rather than boxes. Box counts and sheet sizes vary from maker to maker, so a "box" is not a fixed quantity of tile.

Is stone mosaic tile expensive?

It depends almost entirely on the format. Straight-grid sheets of small chips sit at the bottom of our range. Shaped sheets, meaning hexagons and multi-format pattern sets, sit at the top. Current prices:

Applied to the two jobs above, the 24-sheet backsplash costs $191.76 in a 1x2 travertine and $1,439.76 in a marble hexagon. The 100-sheet shower surround costs $999.00 in a 2x2 marble and $1,199.00 in a 2x4 travertine. Shipping is free on all of these within the United States, to all 50 states and DC, with no minimum order. Thin-set, grout and sealer are not included; your installer will usually buy them locally.

Which chip size works on a shower floor, a backsplash or a feature wall?

1x1 and 1x2 chips, at 144 and 72 pieces a sheet, are the most flexible. Small pieces bend around a curved niche, follow the slope of a shower floor toward the drain, and forgive a wall that is not perfectly flat. The trade-off is grout: a 1x1 sheet carries far more joint than a 2x4, and the joint is what you will be cleaning.

2x2 and 2x4 chips are the usual backsplash and shower-wall sizes. A 2x4 laid in a brick bond pulls the eye sideways, which makes a narrow wall read wider.

6x12 is two chips to a sheet, so it reads almost like a small-format tile. It is the calmest choice for a full-height wall or a fireplace face, and the least suited to anything curved or sloped.

Hexagons and pattern sets carry a wall on their own and do not need a border strip to look finished. A pattern set mixes several chip sizes on one sheet, so a large wall never falls into an obvious repeat. If the wall is a powder room, the ideas in 25 powder room ideas show how much a single patterned wall can carry.

All of these are mesh-backed sheets you set like a single tile. Our blasted range is thinned in production so it can go on a wall without a structural allowance, which is why a mosaic is the one stone surface you can put almost anywhere in a room.

Is marble mosaic tile good for a shower floor?

It can be, with the right chip and the right finish. Small chips are the standard choice for a shower floor because they follow the pitch to the drain and the grout lines give your feet something to grip. A polished face is the wrong choice on a wet floor; a textured face, such as blasted or tumbled stone, is far better.

Two cautions. Marble and travertine are both calcium carbonate, so acidic cleaners will dull the surface over time; use a pH-neutral cleaner, the same routine we describe in how to clean a marble sink. And our mosaic pages are written for walls, backsplashes and shower surrounds first. Each one tells you to check the finish against the traffic the room actually takes before using it on a floor. If you are planning a shower floor, email us the product name and the room before you order, and we will tell you plainly whether we would put that sheet there.

Marble or travertine mosaic: which suits a wet room?

Both work on wet walls. They behave differently.

Marble is metamorphic and dense, which is what lets it hold a crisp edge on a one-inch chip. Our marble sheets cover a wide color range, from Black Marble Blasted 1x2 and the warm brown Emperador to gray, beige, green and aqua blue.

Travertine is sedimentary, and the small natural voids across its face are part of why it reads warm rather than clinical. Our travertine sheets are not filled, dyed or resin-backed, so those voids stay open. On a shower wall that means grout and sealer reach into them during installation, so talk the sequence through with your installer before the first sheet goes up. If you want a cleaner, more uniform face, choose marble. If you want the wall to look as if it has been there for years, choose travertine. Our guide Is travertine good for a sink? goes deeper into how the stone behaves around water.

For a pale, quiet wall there is also Limestone Blasted Mosaic 1x2.

What do blasted, distressed and antiqued finishes mean?

They are three different ways of taking the shine off the stone, and they read very differently once a whole wall is covered.

• Blasted. The face of each chip is opened mechanically, with no acid and no chemical wash, so it keeps the texture the stone had in the ground. Edges stay crisp; the face is matte and slightly rough.
• Distressed. Chips are tumbled and edge-worn before setting, which knocks the corners back. The wall looks as if it has been there a while.
• Antiqued. After cutting, chips are drum-aged, so the edges round off and the surface goes matte instead of polished.

The hexagon and pattern-set sheets are cut and calibrated rather than textured, then hand-set on mesh to an even joint. Whatever the finish, color comes from the seam the stone was cut from, so expect shade to move from sheet to sheet. That variation is the point of natural stone, and it is why the flat product photograph and the room photographs on each page are worth looking at together: a mosaic that looks busy at arm's length often settles down completely across a whole wall.

Do stone mosaics need sealing?

Yes. Seal after installation with a breathable impregnating sealer, and again every couple of years in a wet area such as a shower. A few installation points that make the difference between a good wall and a patchy one:

• Set the sheets on a flat, primed substrate with a white polymer-modified thin-set. Gray adhesive can shadow through a light stone.
• Butter the wall rather than the sheet, keep the mesh dry, and align sheets by eye at each seam so the joint disappears.
• Dry-lay a few sheets first to mix batches, and plan the layout from the most visible corner outward so any cut sheet lands where it is least seen.

Pairing a mosaic wall with a stone basin

If the mosaic is going behind a vanity, choose the basin first and the wall second; the basin is the larger, harder-to-change object. A light travertine wall such as Light Travertine Blasted 2x4 sits naturally behind a basin like the Light Travertine Round Vessel Sink ($850, about 15.9" across and 3.9" high, with a 1.75" drain opening for standard U.S. fittings). For a darker room, a Black Marble Hexagon Mosaic wall gives a pale basin a strong frame. Our article on beige marble and travertine sinks covers how to match a warm basin to tile and vanity, and the full range of basins is in our marble sinks collection.

Before you order

• Measure every surface, add 10%, divide by 0.97 and round up, or use the calculator on the product page.
• Buy the whole job in one order so the sheets come from the same run.
• Check the chip size against the surface: small chips for curves and slopes, larger formats for flat, full-height walls.
• Ask about floors before you commit a sheet to one.

Mosaic sheets ship free within the United States from our Connecticut warehouse. Transit inside the U.S. is 3–4 business days once the order is handed to the carrier, and we confirm the dispatch date by email after you order; the details are in our shipping policy. Returns are accepted within 30 days on unused sheets in their original packaging, as a full-order return, with return shipping paid by the customer and a 25% restocking fee.

The simplest next step is to open the marble and travertine mosaics collection, pick two or three formats, and run your wall's measurements through the calculator on each page. If you would like to see the actual sheets before they leave the warehouse, ask us; we will photograph them for you.

Shop the pieces in this guide

Carved from solid block in our own workshop. Free shipping within the United States.

Silver Travertine Blasted 1x2 $15.00 Travertine Blasted 2x6 & 4x6 $22.00+ Travertine Blasted Mosaic 6x12 $25.00 Light Travertine Blasted 2x4 $18.00

View all Marble Wall Mosaics