Hexagon vs Herringbone vs Basketweave: Choosing a Mosaic Pattern

Pattern is usually the first thing chosen and the last thing checked. Two sheets of the same marble, in the same finish, can produce completely different rooms depending on how the chips are cut and laid — and they will not waste the same amount at the perimeter, take the same time to fix, or cover the same area per box. This guide compares the patterns we cut, on the differences that only show up once the material is on site.

Start from the finish, not the photograph

Most people choose a pattern from a picture and then find out which finishes it comes in. It is worth doing in the other order, because finish changes how a surface behaves underfoot while pattern mostly changes how it looks — and the finish you want may rule out half the patterns before you have looked at a single photograph.

In our own range the spread is uneven. Hexagon is cut in honed, tumbled, polished and brushed, across marble, travertine and limestone — if you have already settled on a finish, it is the pattern most likely to still be available in it. Brick is nearly as broad. Herringbone is honed and tumbled marble. Basketweave and flower are mostly polished. Chevron and fan and scallop are honed; picket is honed and brushed; pebble and ellipse are tumbled.

What each finish actually does — and how to seal and clean it afterwards — is covered in our marble mosaic buyer’s guide. This guide assumes that decision is made.

The three that get compared most

Hexagon

Hexagon earns the default position on availability before anything else: it is the pattern we cut across the widest range of both stone and finish. Whatever you settled on above, hexagon most likely still offers it — which is not true of any other pattern in the range.

It also asks the least of the room it goes into. Against a wall that is out of square, a grid produces a run of tapering cuts that gets worse the further it goes; a hexagon breaks that line into short angled segments and the same wall stops announcing itself. Sheets run around 305 × 265 mm, and chip size varies within the pattern — worth checking against the size of the area, because the same hexagon reads very differently small and large.

Herringbone

Herringbone changes a room’s proportions rather than its texture. It has a direction, and whichever way that direction points is the way the space will feel longer. That makes it the strongest of the three on a wall, in a corridor or above a run of units — and the riskiest in a room that is already narrower than you would like.

It is also the only one of the three where the fixer needs an instruction from you rather than a drawing. Sheets are 290 × 290 mm, and the direction has to be agreed before anything is bonded, because a herringbone that has to be turned cannot be lifted and rotated. The run is cut again from new material.

Basketweave

Basketweave is the one with no direction at all, which is exactly why it keeps being specified. It fills an area evenly and stops at the wall without needing a border to explain it, so it survives in British bathrooms where a more emphatic pattern would date.

Its sheets are the largest of the three at 305 × 305 mm, so it also gives you more coverage per box than either of the others. The variable that decides how the finished floor reads is not the stone but how far the centre dot sits from the weave in tone — and that is the part a photograph exaggerates, so judge it from a sample.

A box is not a box

Mosaic is boxed in fives almost without exception. Those five sheets do not cover the same area from one pattern to the next, because the sheet size changes with the repeat.

• Brick and pebble — around 0.47 m² per box, the most coverage of any pattern we cut.
• Basketweave around 0.465 m², ellipse around 0.45 m².
• Herringbone around 0.42 m². Hexagon straddles the two, at 0.404 m² or 0.42 m² depending on the sheet.
• Picket around 0.388 m², chevron around 0.36 m², flower around 0.353 m².

A box of the flower pattern therefore covers about a quarter less floor than a box of brick. Order by area rather than by box count, and read the coverage figure on the product page you are actually buying from — carrying a box count over from a previous job is how a project ends up one box short of a batch it can no longer match. Some of the shaped and two-tone sheets do not carry a coverage figure on the page; ask us for it rather than working from the pattern above.

Where each pattern loses material

Wastage is not a single percentage you can apply to every mosaic. It depends on where the cut has to land within the repeat.

• Curved patterns waste most. Fan and scallop, flower, ellipse and pebble all have to be cut through the shape at the perimeter, and the offcut is rarely usable elsewhere.
• Directional patterns lose at both ends of the run. Herringbone and chevron need a whole repeat to read correctly, so the sheet that meets the wall is cut rather than shortened.
• Hexagon is the most forgiving, because its angled edge means a partial chip at the wall still looks intentional.
• Brick is close behind — a staggered bond absorbs a slightly out-of-square wall better than a grid does.

Whichever pattern you choose, set out the most visible row first and let the cuts fall where they are least seen. On a bathroom floor that usually means starting from the doorway rather than the far wall.

The rest of the range, grouped by the decision they force

The remaining patterns are easier to think about by what they demand of you than by what they look like.

• Brick, chevron and picket all run one way, so all three belong in the set-out-first group with herringbone. Picket is the surprise there — it looks like a hexagon and behaves like a herringbone.
• Chevron is the most expensive of them to produce: the ends of every chip are mitred on the saw instead of being cut square, which is why the range stays small.
• Fan and scallop is the widest sheet we cut, at 390 × 227 mm. It is the most decorative pattern in the range and the one that most rewards being given a whole surface to itself.
• Pebble is the slowest to fix — an irregular face takes longer to bed level and wants a more forgiving adhesive. Ellipse gives you some of the same softness while still holding a regular set-out.

If you are working the other way round and know the stone before the pattern, the full mosaic collection filters by material and colour as well as shape.

Matching the pattern to the surface

A shower floor wants a smaller chip and plenty of joint: the grout lines are what provide grip, and a small chip follows the fall to the waste without being forced into it. Hexagon and brick both do this, and pebble does it best of all — an irregular face is the one case where the extra fixing time buys something you cannot get another way.

A large floor wants a pattern that stays quiet at scale. Basketweave, hexagon and brick all fill an area without demanding attention. Fan, flower and ellipse do the opposite, which is what makes them right for a splashback, a shower end or the face of a counter and wrong for an open-plan floor.

A narrow room wants its pattern running along the length rather than across it. That applies to brick, herringbone, chevron and picket alike, and getting it the wrong way round is the single decision most likely to make a small bathroom feel smaller.

What to check before you order

• Does this pattern come in the finish I have already chosen?
• What is the coverage per box for this specific product, and how much area am I covering?
• Is the pattern directional, and has the direction been agreed with whoever is fixing it?
• Have I allowed extra for a curved or directional pattern rather than a flat percentage?
• Will the whole job come out of a single batch, with a spare box put aside?

If it is easier to talk a specification through than to work it out from a page, we are in Hailsham and the phone is answered by people who know what is on the racks.