I am doing a 6"x6" travertine tile floor, and I have two kinds of tile, reddish and tannish. I am going to lay them in a checkerboard on the diagonal:

The red tiles are mostly a nice salmon/coral color, but there are a number that are a dramatic ruby color. I really like those. There are also other darker ones that are not so red, but are more muted.
I want to place these ruby and darker tiles more or less randomly throughout the floor. However, I don't think I want truly random. We have had a couple of recent backsplash examples where the lighter and darker tiles were set randomly, but it led to clusters of light or dark tiles that really drew your eye to that cluster. I want to try to avoid that, but still have it look kind of random. Of the red tiles, there will be about 17% ruby and 11% darker, with the rest being similar to the picture I showed.

I am wondering if anyone has any tips or strategies for placing differently colored tiles in a pleasing, pseudo-random manner? Should I try to deliberately place one ruby tile and one dark tile every 6th and 10th tile, respectively, for example? Should I "shuffle" the tiles in the box, and just take them as they come? Roll a die? Any tips or suggestions welcome!

You're not looking for actual randomness. A random draw could yield a floor that looks like a grilled Cheesus. You want the appearance of randomness, which mostly means evenly spaced without forming an actual pattern.

Pretend you're decorating a Christmas tree, and you don't want all the green ornaments together.

We assigned each color a letter, A through F. We took a piece of graph paper and laid out a very large repeat pattern-- I think it was a 10x10 row repeat. If you do too small a repeat pattern, the repeat will be obvious. Then we laid the pattern out on the floor with actual tile, made some adjustments, and noted them on the graph paper model. Then we stood over our contractor during tile install to make sure he didn't screw it up. A random look that also looks good requires some planning.

"Clients often want a random effect using different colours. You wouldn't believe how long we spend trying to get arrangements that look right. It takes a lot of time, and then the client comes home and says she can see a space invader near the cooker."

Angie, have you tried posting over at the John Bridge Tile Forum (google it, GW software rejects the link) -- there's a friendly & helpful set of tile pros over there.

My 3rd grader just did a project of Damien Hirst, of the spot paintings? The artist is a conceptual artist meaning he hires drafts people to execute. He spoke about how he got into an argument with a draftperson about random. He said you might get 4 yellow dots in a row, and it'll look awful but it IS random. You don't actually want that. You want the appearance of randomness.

The possible exception is planting bulbs, where they suggest you mix them up and then just throw them on the ground and plant them where they land.... not something youd do with tiles anyway!

Good luck!

I also agree with sombreuil_mongrel that a large tile layout can be difficult because you should not tread on the tiles just laying on the floor. So far I've been able to use my large living room (moving all of the furniture out of the way) so that I could walk around the layout completely to move tiles. I would often have to remove a few edge ones to make a path to the offending tile(s). I've heard of other people using their driveway. If you're intending to apply an enhancing sealer, you may wish wet the tiles as you work. I decided not to use an enhancing sealer, so I was able to avoid this complication.

Sometimes I found it helpful to squint my eyes slightly to see just a blur of the colors and shapes. That helped me pick out areas that were too "heavy" or "light" (my tile was silver/gray/charcoal/black). In your case, you might use it to see the light and dark, as well as the color variations (red, yellow, green, etc).

Ok. There. That's the anal, ocd part of me.

I'm one who also recommends laying them out in a pattern, then moving the ones you like the best to the more focal part of your piece.

Consider your stone a quilting pattern if you sew. Fabrics are viewed as values of light and dark. Mediums blend things together, blurring the stark lines between the two. There's even some red cellophane viewers that quilters use to block out the distracting color. The red turns colors into shades of black to light red.

I'd love to see the ruby tiles! :)

Good luck.
Christine

I didn't want to have to lay it ALL out ahead of time, so here is what I am planning on doing. To lay the floor, I had to snap chalk lines that form a grid; each cell of the grid contains 9 (3x3) tiles. There are enough ruby tiles that about 3 of every 4 large grids can get a ruby one, and, similarly, about half of the grids gets a dark one. Then I placed (on a CAD program) one ruby per every roughly 3 of 4 grids, and a dark one in about half. I placed them somewhat randomly within the grid.

Here is the gridded version:

and this looks like this when you delete the gridlines:

I think this will provide a decent compromise between planning it all ahead of time and just winging and hoping, and it guarantees that any clusters will be small.

More thoughts are always welcome.

Make sure you have looked at every tile before you start and you are sure what color categories they belong in and if you want to use all of them. Sometimes there are a few clunkers.

I did indeed go through each of the 650 or so tiles the day before yesterday and sorted them into about 5 categories of red and 3 of tan. The main problem was keeping a consistent mental scale for what is considered "light" or "gray"! I do have a number of awful orange ones, but few enough that I can bury them under the cabs. That is also where the ugly dark tan ones are going. I also have a large supply of extra 12x12s on hand, waiting to be ripped into 6x6's (which is where these came from).

I hope some future owner doesn't try to change the layout after planning to keep the floor! :-)

I am following the procedure I outlined above. The tiling is proceeding, but very slowly. I find I can only do about 4 sq. ft per hour. I have about 130 sq. ft., so it will take a while! I am about 1/3 done now. I am really, really happy with how the floor looks. I think it is gorgeous. The ruby tiles look nicely distributed and quasi-random.

Marcolo: I only did it 250 times, but the averaged colors were starting to get washed out, so I stopped... ;-) You and the others are correct, though: I am after the appearance of randomness, not the real thing. Like carefully mussed hair in a J. Crew catalog.

remodelFLA: what a great link! I did play with that, although I wound up not using their excel sheet. The discussion was very helpful in synthesizing my thoughts, however.

David: I like the idea. And, fortunately, with my memory it will only take me about 2 days to have forgotten!

sass: that is a good, helpful idea. Large repeating pattern will likely not be detected. Especially as it will be broken up by things in the room

Circus, I did post at John Bridge. From there, I learned that name of what I was looking for was a "distributed pattern," not random. Plus the mandatory digression into my subfloor! No actual advice on how to effect this, though.

dianalo and prickly: that is a good way to pull it off. I'd probably need a bigger living room, though!

Mtn: I'm curious, was Hirst advocating pure randomness and the draftsperson pseudorandom, or vice versa?

mama goose and Green: Now we are talking. That will get us random, and not take any time!

Casey: yes, thanks for correctly pointing out the problem with pre-layout. Also, I believe I will use an enhancer, based on how vibrant these guys look when wet.

Prickly: Love the squint -- it really works. As for mixing the boxes, yeah, I have done that a lot.

Christine: I don't quilt, but I like the idea. I have a funny image of quilters wearing what appear to be 1950s 3D glasses!

Thanks again, everyone, for your help and input. I can't wait to post progress pix. I think I will start a "progress pix" thread when I get the floor done. I have the walls and windows in, and cabinets are in the garage (unassembled).