Forget Basic Tile Backsplashes: 9 Gorgeous Alternatives From Joanna Gaines

Joanna Gaines has long since established herself as a lover of nontraditional backsplashes, from her early days as an avid shiplap enthusiast to now. "There are so many tile options out there," Joanna Gaines wrote on the Magnolia blog, "But remember you don't have to be limited to just using tile for a backsplash." And, indeed, she has put together a lot of spectacular tile backsplashes, from a bazillion great-looking subway tiles to the genuinely beautiful, unique handmade tile Joanna Gaines used in a rustic kitchen in "Fixer Upper" Season 4, Episode 14. 

Gaines design philosophy seems inspired by tradition, not hemmed in by it. With her vision, just about anything could escape into one of Gaines' backsplash designs, including great expanses of quartzite and marble, little fences of soapstone, more bricks than you can count, a sheet of galvanized steel, and of course, so much more. 

Gaines used quartzite, a hard metamorphic stone, as a backsplash in "Fixer Upper" Season 5, Episode 5.  In the La Pequeña Colina house, polished Macaubus quartzite was mounted so that its gray veining runs horizontally. "This stone offsets the rustic feel of the wooden features in the room and brings in a modern look to the kitchen," Gaines wrote in the Magnolia blog.

It might sound like a Pink Floyd album, but Gaines put real galvanized metal in the House of Symmetry,  in "Fixer Upper" Season 3, Episode 5, though not in the kitchen, which boasts countertop-to-ceiling handmade subway tile. Instead, Gaines put the galvanized metal in the home's craft room, noting that it works well with the butcher-block countertops and other refined rustic elements. Bonus: It's also a magnet board.

The bathroom backsplashes in both cottages of the "Fixer Upper: Colorado Mountain House" home are soapstone, but you might not even notice that because they don't look at all similar. The "big" cottage bathroom got black soapstone countertops and a matching low backsplash, contributing to a somewhat stately look. For the "small" cottage, Joanna Gaines chose soapstone countertops, heavily veined with white and grey. Its low backsplash has a scalloped top edge, lending it a more cutesy storybook vibe. 

Several Joanna Gaines projects made use of marble backsplashes in very different ways. The kitchen butler's pantry designed for "Fixer Upper: The Castle" had both Calacatta marble countertops and backsplashes, a material befitting a castle. In the pantry, the marble lies next to cabinets painted in a sage green familiar to fans of the show, while the kitchen's backsplash is offset by dark wood paneling. 

Brick is a rustic backsplash alternative that Joanna Gaines can't shake. She used brick pavers in several "Fixer Upper" homes, albeit in different ways. The Chicken House of Season 3, Episode 17 sported whitewashed brick pavers on the kitchen's sink side, while the look of the Overgrown Ranch of Season 2, Episode 11 was essentially exposed brick. The Chicken House pavers, Gaines wrote in her blog, "prevented the patterned tile [on the stove side] from looking busy while also adding another level of interest to their kitchen."

Gaines played with concrete work surfaces from time to time, from a Season 4 concrete desk to a number of concrete kitchen countertops. In Season 4, Episode 7 of "Fixer Upper," she undertook modernizing a bland ranch, and as part of that transformation, incorporated industrial-looking concrete panels, including the kitchen's backsplashes. Combined with open shelves and black, minimalist lower cabinets, the effect was described as "ultra-modern." Teasing the renovation on Instagram, Gaines said, "I like the look of concrete countertops annnnd concrete walls now too!"

You saw it coming. In "Fixer Upper" Season 3, Episode 4, Joanna Gaines announced the opening of the Magnolia House bed and breakfast, inspired by the Gaines' home. The kitchen featured concrete countertops, but the backsplash, well, it was fate. "I left the exposed shiplap as the backsplash because I loved the way it looked in the kitchen," Gaines wrote on the Magnolia blog. She joked in the episode that she was in counseling for her subway tile addiction, and instead kept the shiplap in the kitchen and, indeed, the rest of the house.

Some may have (understandably) mistaken it for shiplap, but the vertical boards in the "Mini Reni" butler's pantry are actually tongue-and-groove — wood boards installed by fitting a protrusion (tongue) on one side into a slot (groove) on the other. "I really wanted to add texture to the walls and make it feel just, like, lived in and charming," Gaines said of the board paneling, and the vertical installation just "makes everything feel taller and more dramatic."

Like the Magnolia House, the backsplashes on the set of "Magnolia Table with Joanna Gaines" are just walls. But what walls they are! The kitchen and much of the building have whitewashed stone walls, original to the late-1800s three-floor mill. "The majority of our focus went to reestablishing the foundational elements that made this place so special, removing drywall to expose the natural stone beneath wherever we could," Gaines wrote on her Magnolia Blog. The perfectly imperfect stones add historic charm and texture, perfect for this kitchen.