I can't speak to houses, but I grew up in a NYC apartment in a building from the 1920s and we had a full white subway tile backsplash. While perhaps not original, it was installed no later than the 1950s, when my parents began renting the place.

Thanks for that info, Bookwoman. I had no idea, but that is the sort of ”data point” I’m looking for!

Subway tile has been around for decades.

https://www.mydomaine.com/the-history-of-subway-tile-5179437

Thanks, Judi. That was a very intersting article!

Our house in St. Louis was built in the 1920’s and it had the most beautiful pale yellow subway tile covering all the kitchen walls 3/4 of the way to the ceiling. The trim at the top of the yellow tile was black chair rail type tile, and there was a decorative band of thinner black tile about two yellow tiles down from the black trim. It was original and gorgeous.

adding… I need to decide on a new backsplash for our kitchen also. I keep telling myself i don’t want subway tile bc everybody has it, but then i see it in a kitchen and really like it.

Kswl, I was just looking at a post about Zellige. I love that look but I think I’ll pass for plain subway. Further reading reveals Zellige is more maintenance than I want. https://www.kylieminteriors.ca/tile-trends-zellige-subway-tile-herringbone-countersplashes/

I think it also has a lot to do with the style of your kitchen. I have it in mine, installed 12 years ago when we built our house. I have a sort of Christopher Peacock-inspired kitchen, so it goes. But…as I am becoming influenced by the current, more modern kitchens, I find the pattern/grout (even though it is all white) a bit cluttered looking for lack of a better word. If I were re-doing it (I’m NOT,) I would continue my marble slabs up the backsplash.

Subway tile was out, out, out for decades (WWII - 1990 or so) before people rediscovered it and it was another 15 years before people started calling it "timeless." Great for a home built when it was in vogue (I think being true the the architecture and vintage of the home is always appropriate), but not timeless. I winced a little when a friend put it in when she remodeled the kitchen in her 60s condo.

I have the traditional subway tiles in my NY kitchen that was remodeled in 2009.

When it was time to choose tgevbs for my Florida kitchen we went with a 3x12 for a more transitional look.

As the saying goes, get what you like. The backsplash is the easiest to change out for an update by you or the next person.

I visited the vizcaya estate in Miami this week and there was white subway tile in the serving kitchen. It was built in the late 1910’s I think. The house was very ornate, modeled after European estates, so it stood out to me- classic white subway tile.

Yes, it's now classic, but people forget that 3x6 tile was not used very much at all from 1940 to almost 2000. You could get 3x6, especially flat rectified 3x6 like original subway tile as a very expensive restoration tile and that's about it.

Square was the shape for 60 odd years.

So 3x6 subway is not so "classic" or appropriate in kitchens and bathrooms for houses built during the latter half of the 20th century in the 3x6 shape. There were rectangular tiles used during the 1950s, but not as much, and the shape or size was a bit different.

So subway tile is not "classic" in a house it would not have appeared in in the first place.

DH's NYC apartment he grew up in had subway tile in their bathroom with the small hex tile on the floor. The kitchen had none, though, as it was unfitted. Given the age of the appliances, I suspect it was put in in the 1920s or earlier.

AD, my grandfather’s 1920s bungalow IIRC had white subway tile with black accents in the bathroom and white small hex with an occaisional black hex. If there were a pattern in the floor tile, I don’t recall it.

My current house was built in 2014. I had a plain white subway tile backsplash installed with the very thinnest of pale gray epoxy grout lines. I still like it and it has been fairly easy to maintain.

Because I am so grout averse, the MBR shower and all tub surrounds are a solid surface material that appears to be white subway tile with white grout lines. I’m still happy with it, too.

The condo I’m contemplating buying needs the MBR bathroom gutted too. @Kswl, do you have a link to your post about putting solid surface panels in your MBR? That might be the direction I would go since I remember liking the look of yours and it makes cleaning so easy.

When we moved into our house 25 years ago, the kitchen was covered in yellow plastic subway tile with a black border. If I had to guess, I'd say it was put in late 50s or 60s. We have white now and I'm a fan.

I did solid surface panels in one bathroom remodel in our first house, mid 90s. It was so each to clean and always looked good. I do not remember the brand, but I did not do lots of swirly white contrast to make it more marbled. It was more a tone on tone, and lightly done.

Our current shower walls have large tiles, 18" x 12" (?). Medium grout. I started using Dawn Power Wash spray on the smaller floor tiles. Much easier to keep clean.

Zellige tiles are currently trendy, but I do like the look.

Agree with whoever said the backsplash should fit the house.

The curved slabs have been a thing for awhile now, at least where I am from. You might remember I took it all the way to the ceiling in our last house.

@Allison0704, I’ve recently seen the full slab backsplash called a ”countersplash.” While I like that because of no grout lines, I think it might be over-spending for the condo I’m looking at.

BBstx, here is the link: https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/5971033/downstairs-bathroom-completed#n=30

When we finally get around to our master bath I am replacing all the tile with a different solid surface material as Kohler no longer makes Choreograph, the product we used in the downstairs bath. I also loathe grout!

I grew up in the ’60s-70s. To me, subway tile is just old, a relic of the turn of the century, not of the millennium, because only old clinical or industrial settings had it. Even still, seeing it in all the new kitchens, to me it is just old and clinical and industrial, not cozy or classic in a good sense.

I’ve had a couple of kitchens that came with wallpaper or paint for the backsplash, and I have to say, is there anything easier to change than paint? No!

I think it's classic in the sense that it's tasteful and neutral. It's the context that gets tricky. For instance, does the color of the tiles work with the kitchen?

Then there's me who doesn't want to do the thing that everyone else is doing. And subway tiles are something that everyone is doing. If I were updating I'd consider subways but with a twist. Handmade look, interesting color, or slightly different size than the ubiquitous 3 by 6.

Really the ceramic tile that was used for most of the latter part of the 20th century is not "subway tile", it's just ceramic bathroom or kitchen tile. I was not referred to as subway tile at the time because everyone knew it wasn't. If your bathroom from the 1950s, 60s, or 70s has ceramic tile in it, that's not subway tile.

People who grew up with kitchens what had short backsplashes or sheets of countertop as backsplashes and bathrooms with very little wall tile, and acrylic or fiberglass or Masonite surrounds around the bathtubs, may call any tile, since the resurgence of subway tile at the beginning of the 21st century, that is around the right size "subway tile" and say yes, yes, it's been used continuously since it was put in the actual subway, well, they're just wrong.

People may think this is being pedantic or splitting hairs, or whatever, but really find me any design books published in the midcentury period referring to ordinary bathroom tile as "subway". They don't.