featuring peeling white paint and chartreuse wainscoting. "But all of this would be, like, subway tile, from the floor up," she says, conjuring a great wall of glossy, 3-by-6-inch ceramics.

“The original subway tile is gloss white, but now we are seeing them in many different colours, and even in a matt finish,” Zipevski says. And while most people still lay their subway tiles in ...