The French country bathroom style harkens back to an Old World look with subtle refinement. A soothing color palette and cabinets that look like furniture make it a calm and comfortable room that can blend with the rest of your house’s décor or stand alone on its own beauty.

One of the most important choices for a French country bathroom is its floor. Today it’s possible to capture that Old World charm by using modern materials that both match the look you’re after and are ideal for use in a bathroom. You can even get these flooring materials in the common, popular colors of traditional French country flooring to match the rest of your décor.

Popular Colors for French Country Flooring

Color choices for a French country bathroom floor typically include natural earth tones and gentle blues, greens, yellow, beiges and browns. The addition of a bright color as a highlight can add energy to the room and enhance the impact of the primary color theme. Here are a few of the most popular colors for French country flooring:

• Beige. Tile and light wood tones provide many beige variations that work well for this style. Beige itself adds warmth and a natural feel to your bathroom. The color also matches the colors of the traditional materials like stone and wood that would have been available to authentic French country living.
• Earth tones. Beyond beige, earth tones offer a darker, distressed look of wood and worn stone. A dark floor offers contrast to lighter walls, fixtures and furniture as well as creating a setting that can work with almost any style. Lighter wood or stone coloring can blend in with the overall color scheme or, if a distressed look is chosen, highlight the appearance and ambiance of the room.
• White (or black & white). Even in the French countryside, many homes turned to the traditional white or white and black flooring. It accentuates the light in the room and gives it a bright look, working with any colors in furniture and walls.

Achieving a French Country-Inspired Floor in Your Bathroom

For a bathroom, tile remains the most practical material to use. It’s easy to clean, resists water and humidity and lasts. While tile is recommended for bathrooms, the many different looks available mean you have plenty of options.

• Choose a wood-look tile It might be a faux wood tile, but it looks like wood. Better yet, it lasts longer, resists wear better and won’t warp or rot due to moisture. Plus, you can find a lot of colors and styles from light woods to distressed looks to rich, dark tones.
• Stone. Nothing says French countryside quite like a stone floor. If stone is a theme in your home design or even if you simply like it, you can’t go wrong laying a tile floor that looks like stone.
• Tile patterns. Small hex patterns of black and white, subtle blends of beige or colors that fit the traditional French country bathroom palette work well. Patterns can be simple, more complex like a basket weave or have borders, edging and designs.
• Marble. If you want a real stone floor for your French country bathroom, marble may be an ideal choice. It’s popular, can last almost forever and its natural patterns make it a natural fit. Just be sure to seal it about once a year to protect the stone.

In addition to choices of materials, you can also choose how to lay them out. Some like hex patterns may come with recommendations. If you choose to go with a wood-look tile, consider patterns like the basic corner-to-corner layout, offset or for a complex but traditional French country floor design, a herringbone arrangement.