If you’re looking to improve your artistic vision by handpainting your bathroom tiles, find out how an expert like artist Marion Rosetzky manages to make an impact that’s both intimate and visually appealing.

One day I started playing around on the surface of a tile, thinking, “I’ll just do this for our new house” and it basically grew from there. In the early 1990s I was commissioned to produce Renaissance-style tiles for the ‘Rubens to Renaissance’ exhibition. From that grew my current designs.

People mostly liken them to Islamic-style decorations. En masse, I think they look like Persian rugs.

I hand-paint my designs onto either handmade or standard white glazed tiles, which are then refired to give them maximum durability. I have three basic patterns that I work with, and use a combination of three colours per tile, which I can vary according to what my customers want.

Most commonly people will use them to create a border, but some people scatter them, others use them in vertical rows and some people cut them and put them on the diagonal along the floor. Anything is possible and I’ll match colours to suit people’s tastes.

Mass-produced tiles are uniform and precise, whereas handmade tiles are slightly irregular and thicker. Also, because they’re terracotta, they’ve got more character. Generally you can’t lay handmade tiles with standard tiles because of the size discrepancies.

Exactly the same as any other tile. You can scrub them using all the standard products and they won’t scratch or fade. The only reservation I’d have is laying them on the floor, particularly if you’re going to be trampling on them with anything really sharp of abrasive.