How to prepare wall tile samples for rendering

Updated October 11, 2026

What to upload

Several tiles with the grout between them, laid the way you sell them: stacked, offset or herringbone. Renders keep that layout, make every tile one size with a grout joint between each pair, and give the glaze the sample's own finish.

There's no box for grout width or color. Both come from the sample, so show the grout you'd recommend.

The ideal sample

A small panel of tiled wall, cropped to the tiles.

Several tiles in the real layout, grout included.
Straight on, so the grout lines stay straight.
Cropped to a clean edge, with no backing board or table showing.
Light angled so the glaze doesn't flare.
True color, with no filter or edit.

Do this: Ideal
Several tiles, the grout, the real layout.
Avoid: One tile alone
No grout and no layout to copy.
Avoid: Glare
A bright glaze reads as a missing patch.
Avoid: At an angle
The grout lines converge.
Avoid: Hard shadow
One side of the wall comes out darker.
Avoid: Color cast
White tile turns yellow.

Illustrations: the same sample each time, with one thing changed.

Check the repeat tile

When you save, Skip Shoot crops in from the edges of the swatch and repeats the middle in a grid, three by three unless you choose otherwise. That repeat tile, not the swatch on its own, is what renders read, so whatever the tile looks like is what you get. The tile is built from an uploaded swatch file: a swatch given only as a link renders from the plain swatch, with no tile, so upload the file.

Open the product again after saving: the Repeat tile preview shows what renders will use.
Visible seams, a grid or a bright cross where the copies meet mean the swatch won't tile cleanly. Try 2 × 2, which repeats least, or take the swatch again, flatter.
If the swatch is already a wide, flat shot with several repeats in it, choose 2 × 2, so the pattern isn't shrunk further than the picture already shrinks it.

Measurements

One tile sets the scale.

Width and height, in inches: one tile. Left blank, tiles are drawn 9 by 5 inches.
Leave depth blank unless the tile has real relief: it's read as how far each piece stands out.
There's no pattern repeat box: tile is laid in pieces.

Before you save

Check each sample:

Several tiles, grout showing, in the layout you sell.
Straight on, cropped to the tiles.
No glare, true color.
One tile's width and height entered.
JPEG, PNG or WebP, 4.5 MB or less.

Create your workspace, then choose a plan to render a few of your tiles before you prepare the rest.

Get started