How far should kitchen backsplash go?

Q: How far down should backsplash go behind stove?

Make sure theres at least 8 ”- 9” between the burner and the tile surface, or a back control panel on the stove to provide distance.

March 31, 2020
Kitchen Remodel Planning

Table of Contents Show

Basic Guidelines for Kitchen Backsplash Placement
Should I Run My Backsplash to the Ceiling?
Use Your Backsplash to Create a Focal Point
What If My Upper Cabinets and Lower Cabinets Don’t Align?
Look for a Natural Stopping Point
Consider these tips and tricks to work around cabinets, windows and more for a finished look in your kitchen
Where should backsplash begin and end?
How far down should backsplash go behind stove?
Should backsplash go to end of counter?

Kitchen backsplashes are practical and beautiful at the same time. They make for easy cleaning during those inevitable kitchen messes, and they add to the overall design of the kitchen. One question we hear a lot during our design consultations is, “Where should my kitchen backsplash start and stop?” The answer depends on your home, your aesthetic, your budget, and more. Here are some backsplash placement tips to help you decide for your home.

Basic Guidelines for Kitchen Backsplash Placement

There are many factors that influence where your kitchen backsplash starts and finishes. You may have an obvious row of upper and lower cabinets that need a backsplash in between. For less obvious circumstances though, here are some guidelines:

Put a backsplash anywhere food prep will occur. The main purpose of a backsplash is to make for easy cleanup. Run your backsplash along the walls of the kitchen adjacent to your food prep areas.
Run your kitchen backsplash between upper and lower cabinets. The backsplash connects the two sets of cabinets, which helps the room feel bigger and more cohesive.
Do not put a backsplash behind your fridge unless you can clearly see that wall. In most cases, the space behind the fridge is not visible anywhere in the kitchen. There is no need to spend money on labor and materials for a place you will not see.
Do put a backsplash behind your cooktop and hood vent. Many homeowners will put accent tile behind their cooktop and hood vent to act as a feature in the kitchen. Grease, bubbling sauce, steam and other elements coming from your stove make for a messy cleaning job. Having a backsplash there will eliminate the headache.
Use your cabinets to mark the end of your backsplash. You can extend the tile beyond the cabinets, but this marks a logical ending for the backsplash.

Should I Run My Backsplash to the Ceiling?

In terms of how high your kitchen backsplash should be, that’s up to you. Many homeowners stop their backsplash level with the bottom of their upper cabinets. However, some choose to take the tile all the way up the ceiling. This can make the kitchen feel taller, drawing the eye up the wall. It can also make open shelves and other features stand out, depending on the style of backsplash you select. Running the backsplash to the ceiling tends to create a more ‘high end’ look.

Use Your Backsplash to Create a Focal Point

Since your backsplash makes up the bulk of the wall space in your kitchen, use it as an opportunity to create a focal feature. You could run mosaic tile vertically from your range all the way to the ceiling. You could have a set of accent tile above your sink. Don’t be afraid to do something a little different to make your kitchen design completely custom.

What If My Upper Cabinets and Lower Cabinets Don’t Align?

This is one of the main reasons people ask, “Where should my kitchen backsplash start and stop?” If your upper and lower cabinets do not align, you have a few options. You could stop the backsplash where the upper cabinets end, but we usually recommend lining up with the base cabinets. You could also taper your tile or angle your stone backsplash to gradually connect the top to the bottom. Yet another option is to line the backsplash up with the base cabinets, then run the backsplash all the way up to the ceiling. This is a good choice in open concept spaces because it helps establish a zone for the kitchen.

Look for a Natural Stopping Point

The best rule for kitchen backsplash placement is to look for a natural stopping point. This could be a wall, a window, a cabinet edge, or anything else in between. You can use tile edging trim or bullnose tile to create a distinct edge for the backsplash. You could also use a creative edge design, such as tapering a set of hexagon tile away.

If you opt for a full kitchen remodel with O’Hanlon Kitchens, we will discuss exactly where your kitchen backsplash should start and stop. Contact us online or give us a call at 443-285-0558 to schedule your design consultation.

Consider these tips and tricks to work around cabinets, windows and more for a finished look in your kitchen

Toronto Interior Design Group is a trusted one-stop-shop residential interior design boutique-style firm crafting timeless interiors.

Wondering where to end your splashback? Never even thought about it? It can be a surprisingly complex question. These tips will help you find the right place to stop your splashback to get a crisp look in any kitchen.

From a designer’s perspective, the best time to stop a splashback is… never! After all, when you’ve chosen a beautiful material, why wouldn’t you want more of it? Taking a splashback wall-to-wall and benchtop-to-ceiling makes for seamless lines and a dramatic effect.

Of course, in reality it isn’t always an option to cover every centimetre of wall in a coveted stone. Even in this luxe kitchen someone had to decide: where should the finish end on the wall behind the oven? Above the range hood? Below it? At the same height? In your project, these decisions can be simple or quite complicated, depending on multiple factors.

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Rule Number 1
Opinions differ on this, but for a polished look I typically tile just the main walls of the kitchen (those that back the cabinets), ending at the corners rather than wrapping around to finish the side walls, if there are any. In the case of an odd corner (like on the left here, where there is likely a pipe in the wall – click on the image for a closer look), consider the whole corner as part of the ‘back’.

In some cases, a ‘sidesplash’ on a non-cabinet wall (perpendicular to your main splashback wall) can be functional and beautiful. However, skipping it is the simplest way to avoid situations where elements don’t line up neatly. Typically, the bench, upper cabinets and wall all end at different places on the sides, leaving no definitive stopping point.

In this example, the splashbacks end at the corners of the room instead of wrapping onto the small walls adjacent to the doorway. If it did wrap onto those walls, the two sides of the door would be hard to balance and would likely look a bit awkward.

Kitchen Size

Small kitchens
Fully covering the wall is usually your best bet in a small kitchen (or in a larger kitchen that has just a small area for the splashback).

This sort of layout, with just a single splashback area between the fridge cabinet and side wall, is common in galley kitchens in apartments. Tiling the entire area in one material makes for the tidiest finish, which can help make the kitchen look its largest.

Big kitchens
In the case of a very large kitchen, or one with dramatically tall ceilings, taking tile to full height can bust the budget or completely overload the look. In a case like this, ending the tile vertically at the same line as the upper cabinets gives a better finish.

If you use a darker colour for the tiles than the remaining upper wall, it can help bring down the apparent ceiling line so the room feels a little more intimate.

In spaces with taller ceilings, a bulkhead often is used at ceiling height or to fill in the void above the uppers. This also gives the splashback a natural place to finish, so everything looks pleasingly framed and there’s no empty space left to collect knick-knacks and dust.

Rule Number 2
Knowing where to stop your splashback horizontally is easy if your kitchen runs wall to wall, but what if it ends partway along a longer wall? In a case like this, where the kitchen cabinetry ends mid-room, the best option is to end the upper cabinets, lower cabinets and splashback all at the same crisp vertical line.

Notice at the right side of this kitchen how the splashback aligns with the upper and lower cabinets – while the bench hangs out over that line a little bit – rather than extending to the end of the bench and sticking out past the upper cabinets (which to me would be much less tidy).

Of course, this requires the upper and lower cabinets to align crisply, which can take careful planning when laying out the kitchen. Using filler panels and adjusting the spacing around a window can help make cabinets end at the same place on the top and bottom, even if the widths of each cabinet don’t match perfectly above and below.

Other Considerations

Peninsulas
What about times when the upper and lower cabinets don’t align? A common place for this to occur is U- or L-shaped kitchens where the uppers end over a peninsula. In this case, I would suggest ending the splashback in line with the uppers, so you still get a crisp vertical line.

Browse more images of kitchens with peninsula units

Windows
Sometimes there will be very small areas of wall between windows and a bench or cabinet. It may be tempting to leave these areas empty (and often easier on your tiler), but the overall effect will be subtly tidier if you imagine the window does not exist when planning where to end the tile.

In this space, the tile continues to the end of the bench, as ending at the upper cabinet would be far too early.

Here, the tile continues all the way to the corner and up to the height of the upper shelves so from a distance, the line of the upper cabinets is unbroken. It’s a subtle difference versus simply ending at the window, but these little details can make a kitchen feel much more finished.

Modern slab splashbacks
In a kitchen with modern styling and a cool slab splashback, it’s extra important for the elements to align pleasingly, or the look can become sloppy. Here, the cabinets and bench are sized to line up perfectly. When installing a peninsula with an overhang, you can also add or subtract a couple of centimetres of benchtop to make the maths work out perfectly.

Traditional slab splashbacks
Going for a more traditional or farmhouse-inspired look? A charming slab splashback like this benefits from having some negative space left around it. Remember, in some cases it doesn’t really need to line up with anything – in fact, it can be almost better in some cases if it doesn’t.

Everything You Need to Know About Farmhouse Sinks

Edgy tiles
If you have an interesting tile shape, such as a playful hexagon, you can consider ending the tile with a messy edge to give a more relaxed appeal.

This can apply to the horizontal ends and the verticals. This tile fades slowly to white vertically so that the vibrant blue doesn’t have to carry all the way to the ceiling, and it makes for a unique feature.

Cabinet-free walls
In L- or U-shaped kitchens that have large areas – or entire walls – with no upper cabinets, you can tile the empty wall full-height or simply continue the upper line of the splashback around the entire room, as done here.

Ending the splashback with an open shelf, even a shallow one, can give it a nice cap on walls where there are no other particular ending points such as a window or cabinet.

Differing heights
In a kitchen with many items at different heights, I would still use the bottom of the cabinets as a main stopping point, with possibly a little exception for a taller splashback continued up to the range hood. Here, ending at the windows would leave an awkward sliver of space below the cabinets.

In more traditional kitchens, sometimes the tile will run even a little above the bottom of the cabinets, which gives a pleasing overlap that feels more relaxed and reduces the need to cut tiles into tiny slivers.

Where should backsplash begin and end?

How far down should backsplash go behind stove?

Make sure there's at least 8 ”- 9” between the burner and the tile surface, or a back control panel on the stove to provide distance.

Should backsplash go to end of counter?

Some like to end it where the upper cabinet ends. Others like to stop at the edge the counter. And still, others want to take it to the end of the wall. Whichever looks best for the kitchen is the best place to end the backsplash.

kitchen backsplash