How to Design Checkerboard Flooring (Color, Material, Finish)

Want to learn how to design checkerboard flooring? Let’s explore the many creative options there are for checkerboard flooring. Let’s think outside of the black and white box and talk about color options, tile material, and finishes to get you your own unique look for your checkered flooring.

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How to Design Checkerboard Flooring

As you will soon see, there are many options for creating a checkerboard flooring design in one of your living spaces. You should consider the type of floor tiles you would like to purchase as well as the colors of the tiles and the final finish.

Checkerboard Flooring Tile Material

Let’s first talk about tile material. I’m sure there are countless options but I’ll share the top three picks that I think are the best to get a beautiful checkerboard floor design.

1. Marble or Stone Flooring

In my humble opinion, marble or a genuine stone tile is going to give you the most authentic, timeless look. You can’t go wrong with something like a Carrara marble tile with gray veining and a black marble tile with white veining. That is the exact design I chose for our mudroom.

I don’t think this look will ever age, and when the tile does age–the patina will just make it look even better.

Every lovely European space that inspired me the most had stone tile for the checkerboard design, no matter the color combo.

If doing all stone is a little out of the budget, you could even mix stone tile with something less expensive like a ceramic tile. I’ve seen that work like what appears to be in this bathroom space.

Stone can even be something besides marbles, like travertine, limestone, slate, or any other natural stone. That is what appears to be in this space, and it is incredibly beautiful.

2. Ceramic or Porcelain Tile

Ceramic or porcelain tile tends to be the most budget-friendly option, generally speaking. To me, it doesn’t quite have as much of an authentic feel, but I found some images that prove it can still be lovely.

Here is a space done by Joanna Gaines with ceramic tile installed in a diagonal checkerboard pattern, and it looks very nice and high-end.

Ceramic or porcelain tile also comes in more varieties and colors so you can play around with more options if you go that route.

3. Concrete

Another material that is getting more and more trendy is concrete tiles! The possibilities are endless with what kind of checkerboard pattern you can design with concrete. They can dye it so many colors and create so many custom sizes.

Deb, from Seeking Lavender Lane, used a gray and white concrete tile in her mudroom area. I adore the organic look that it gives to her space. I think the texture of the concrete tile is so good if you love organic textures. Deb didn’t even grout her tile in this space, and I still love the design.

Checkerboard Flooring Finishes

Now let’s look at a couple of finishes or sheens that you might want to consider when you are thinking about the look you want on a checkerboard floor. In my mind, you have two main options–a matte finish or a glossy finish.

A matte finish is my personal favorite because it has more of the lived-in, old-world that feel I love so much.

In this case, you would look for honed marble or stone and make sure any sealer you apply is also in a matte finish.

A glossy finish on your checkerboard floor can be very striking, especially if you have a space that is very glamorous. All the images I found of very glamorous spaces had a checkerboard floor with a high sheen finish.

In this case, you would look for polished tiles and use a sealer with a glossy finish.

Color Options

Alright, are you ready to have some fun? I discovered so many creative spaces that used a vast array of colored tiles for their checkerboard floors. They almost made me question my boring old black and white floor… almost.

This fancy entryway used brown and white stone, which goes great with the surrounding wood tones and white walls.

This eclectic space looks very interesting! I felt the off-white and black checkerboard floor was the perfect choice in choosing a classic design but mixing it up.

Another favorite of mine is this brown and black checkerboard look as shown in this little entryway. I can’t get over this unique look and how European it feels to me. All the simple textures and elements go so well together.

Brace yourself for this one–green and white stone checkerboard flooring. This image with the stone walls, that amazing door, the European architecture. There have been many times I have wanted to jump into this picture and soak it all in. That tile was a bold and very beautiful choice!

I’ve been scared of red in my home for a long time, but I’m slowly warming up to the idea, especially when I saw this little bathroom with the red checkerboard floor. It’s so vintage and so charming.

My Grandma had a red, black, and white vinyl checkerboard floor in her kitchen. This feels so familiar to me, in the best way possible.

Look closely and you can see that this is a painted checkerboard floor with green and white.  It looks fantastic and I think you could get this same look with the concrete tiles too.

This was done by one of my favorite designers, Leanne Ford–so if she can pull off a painted checkerboard floor–so can you.

Now this one was the most jaw-dropping image I found! These look like handmade tiles in smaller squares were installed together in a bigger square to create the checkerboard look. Isn’t it so fantastic!

This is the work of June and Blue that I found on Instagram.  What a creative designer she must be!

Here is another unique space where they used green and black checkerboard tile or vinyl in this cute retro kitchen.

Another retro kitchen with blue and white flooring, which I find to be so creative. Sometimes I wish I could be brave enough to make these kinds of design decisions.

Kind of like these smaller green and white tiles. Somehow it doesn’t feel too busy for this space, to me, and was a bold design decision!

I’ll finish up with perhaps my absolute favorite look for a checkerboard floor that I’ve seen – with this tone-on-tone stone floor.

Oh my, I think it is incredibly beautiful and I adore all the organic textures. This tile was well out of my budget, but a girl can dream, right?

Did we get your creative juices flowing? I would love to hear which look was your favorite!

Make sure you catch up on the entire series I published on checkerboard flooring.

• Day 1: Our Mudroom Checkerboard Flooring
• Day 2: 12 Timeless Black and White Checkerboard Flooring Ideas
• Day 3: Checkerboard vs Harlequin Flooring. What is the difference?
• Day 4: How to Choose the Color, Material and Finish for your Checkerboard Floors
• Day 5: How to Choose the right size of tile for your space
• Day 6: Where to Buy Tile for Checkerboard Flooring