How to Tile a Niche with Profiles

Shower niches are a handy way to keep everything in your shower neatly organized. With the right tile and trim, they can also be stunning design elements within your bathroom.

Schluter-Systems offers pre-fabricated shower niches made of KERDI-BOARD that are fully sealed, quick to install, and integrate with KERDI and KERDI-BOARD shower assemblies. They come in a variety of sizes, or can be customized to fit your design. Please refer to our Schluter-KERDI-BOARD Custom Niche video for all of the details on how to create and install your own custom niche!

To finish it all off, a variety of Schluter profiles are available to complete your tile shower to perfection. Schluter Profiles can add bold or subtle elements of design, while ensuring the integrity of your tile installation.

First thing’s first—tile layout! We start by placing the wall tile on the floor to mimic the layout on the wall with spacers to simulate the grout joint width. Tile layout can be an important factor in determining the position of the niche…and ultimately the aesthetic of your tile and profile installation.

In general, there will be a practical range for the height of the niche for user convenience. Within that range, we will attempt to position the niche so that the opening aligns with the wall tile installation to minimize tile cuts and produce even grout lines. Keep in mind that you need to consider your grout joint width, shower base thickness, any perimeter profiles, and thin-set mortar in your layout measurements. In this installation, our tray and perimeter profiles are already installed. So we will calculate our wall tile layout from the top of our profile, which will determine our niche placement.

If your tray and profiles are not installed, you will have to adjust your calculations to include these elements since they will all influence the layout and can affect the placement of your niche.

Another consideration is that the KERDI-BOARD-SN has a two inch wide flange around the perimeter that will fit where the wall board is cut away for the n