More? (You are warned!)
So there are enormous factories where people are making gillions of small tiles, and sheets with combinations, and... Arrrgh! A whole new and unknown world!
There is one guideline we have to adhere: we cannot have a blue pool. That is a pity, else we'd have made up our mind quite quickly. In this region the land is "rustico" and not "urbano", so there are very tight building restrictions. You cannot build, and not a swimming pool either. What you can do is construct a "balsa": a reservoir for irrigation water. You can even have a filter installation, and even put chlorine in the water, but you cannot have blue tiles. You need to use earth colours, like ochre, browns, blacks, yellows, and possibly greens (algae!). (Although the are blue algae, we better not try that.)
/Those small 2.5x2.5cm glass tiles, or "gresites" in Spanish, for pools are delivered as sheets of 12x15 tiles. You can choose one colour for all, or have a variation within one sheet of light and dark, called "niebla": mist/cloud. Then there's the choice of smooth versus anti-slip ("antideslizante"), but under water smooth is fine.
If you're not satisfied with a niebla mix, you can make your own!
Actually, we had almost made up our mind with the yellow niebla above, when a photo of a green pool turned up.
That green pool is made with this mix. Isn't it nice? And quite affordable, too.
"Affordable" is relative. Like these, they are about €50 per m²
And how about luminous? Fun for accents, and as the edge of underwater steps, and as random scattered pixels. (€120 per m², but you don't need much.)
It really works! This is after a few hours outside till the evening, and then inside in the dark. They have been emitting light all night, next to my bed.
If we opt for a more single colour pool I will add mosaics. Of space invaders along the water line.
Brown pool? Not too bad.
How about a red pool?
I was going to suggest green and teals, but you got there yourself. Brown is less appetizing IMHO.
ReplyDeleteI was going to suggest green, and the fosforessents are a nice gimmick, but maybe more for the edge of the pool. Special patterns add a LOT of money for extra labour to the mix, and it requires a not too-hungover tile setter. With small tiles like that you have already quite some anti-slip because of the grout lines. They also last less long because the grout is the weak link. I'd really stress to put the best anti slip tiles you can find on paths and around the pool. Natural, rough, stone works well for surrounds and paths too, like slate. Or fake slate from concrete. Also dirt and algae don't show so much so you don't have to clean it every day. White pools surrounds are the worst. (Most pools are actually tiles white, and then get the blue colour from the water.)
(I get a lot of the tiles I use from Spain, they have really nice ones.)
Brown pool can be done, see above. Red too.
ReplyDeleteLuminescents are only for accents. We're not a brothel..
We'll only use the small tiles for the walls and bottom of the pool, not around. We have looked at concrete "impresso" tiles, but were not impressed. Stay tuned for our solution :-)