HUGE fan of this look. Especially the marble hex tile. Classy.

did this in the bathroom in our last house and highly recommend it. looks great and the tile always looks clean.

Agreed - Loving the marble hex tiles w/ grey grout!

I agree, too -- especially hex with black grout.

The bathroom floor in the house we just bought has large beige ceramic tile with terracotta grout. Colored grout doesn't work in every color!

I ride the subway everyday. Dark grout looks dirty to me.

ahh I love the first image!

@GreatFriend LOLOL awesome :)

Oooo, I want that bathroom with the hexagon tiles!! It's vintage done properly..so chic!!

this should only be done where the tiles have been laid down well. nothing brings out the crookedness of a poor tiling job like dark grout.

agree w/ GreatFriend

Just looks like mildew to me

I like it in some cases, but I like it a lot more when the tile's darker, like with the hexagonal tiles. To me the last photo looks dirty instead of fresh.

I have dark grey tile with dark grey grout in my shower and it awful. Lime and soap build up is more of a problem than mildew. I can't wait to rip it out and renovate.

Love this look, and it's very practical for maintenance too, but I agree that it could look dirty - so it's risky. I've looked at the pictures several times and I can't quite decide what makes it work better in some cases than others. Maybe darker gray or black looks better than lighter gray?

We have dark grout in both subway tiles (walls) and hexagonal tiles (floor) in our bathroom! I absolutely love it, and think it looks wonderful!

We did this in a previous house more than twenty years ago and I liked it a lot. We used a dove gray grout, not too dark and not too light. Soap bits and toothpaste drips were not a problem because the area around the sink was not in the tiled area. Mildew was a constant threat in an old house with no A/C in humid summers. It worked for us.

I just tiled two bathrooms with the inexpensive subway tile from Lowe's and used white grout. I love that look even more and so far it's staying clean.

When i had my bathroom redone, I chose white grout. Big mistake. In hindsight, i would have gone with a mid to dark gray.

Another fine example of dark grout is the restrooms at The Smith restaurant in NYC. A bit of a twist...subway tile paired with a slate blue grout. Great look!

If you are local, check it out. Otherwise, on my next visit, I will snap a couple of iPhone pics to share.

Looks too institutional to me. Reminds me of school bathrooms.

Number 3 looks amazing to me! I heart it and want to do that in my ugly masterbath once I rip out the five floors that are currently in there (ugh what were they thinking?).

I've done several school projects, and dark grout is the preference. It's funny to see comments about it looking institutional.
If you look at most public restrooms, at your favorite high end restaurant, and you will see that the grout is darker than the tile. It's just a maintenance thing, but when you pick the right color, becomes the right accent.

Um, when you're trying to make the case for something *not* looking institutional, don't use "public restrooms" to make your case.

I love the idea of dark grout because I hate housework. But white tile with dark grout looks nothing but institutional to me, like a my old elementary school cafeteria kitchen.

The beauty of the second pic makes want to cry

I wish my public school bathrooms and cafeterias had had tile this nice. Maybe it's regional/time-period thing. All the school facilities in my home town were mostly built inthe 60's and 70's. We have a lot of harvest orange and puce green laminate, so that look means "school" to me.