The gaps are the pattern
Pack circles as tightly as possible and each one touches six neighbors, with a small curved triangle of space left between every three.
Those triangles are what a penny round floor is half made of. On a square mosaic the joint is a grid of straight lines; here it is a field of small three-sided shapes, and it reads as a texture rather than as a set of lines.
Which makes the joint color decisive
A penny round carries more joint per square foot than almost any other format, and the joint has a shape of its own rather than being a line.
A joint matched to the tile gives a surface of soft repeated discs. A contrasting joint turns the triangles into a visible second pattern running between the circles, which is a completely different floor. It is the most consequential decision on this material and it costs nothing either way.
Honed, almost throughout
Honed covers this range with a tumbled piece alongside it.
A circle has no edge to catch light the way a cut square does, so the glitter that makes a polished square mosaic worth buying is largely absent here. What honing gives instead is an even matte field where the shape reads cleanly, which is what the format is for.
The sheets are not square
The sheets here run 11 1/4x11 3/4 and 11 1/2x11 1/2 rather than a clean 12x12.
That follows from the packing. Rows of circles offset against each other, so the vertical spacing and the horizontal spacing are different numbers, and a sheet trimmed out of that arrangement lands on whatever the arithmetic gives. The coverage figure on the listing is what compares between sheets.
Why it suits a small floor
Most of it is white, with a gray behind it, and the repeat is around an inch across.
A repeat that small gives even a powder room floor several hundred complete shapes, so the pattern reads whole in a space where a large format would be cut through at every wall. It is also why the format survives in period bathrooms alongside the hexagon.
The name, and what a penny actually is
The format takes its name from the coin, and the discs in a traditional penny round are close to an inch across for that reason.
It dates from the same period as the hexagon and the basket weave, when small unglazed porcelain discs paved bathroom and shop floors by the acre. What has changed since is the material: this range is marble rather than fired clay, which gives the same geometry a quite different surface.
Where penny round goes
A bathroom floor, a powder room, a shower pan, a niche and a band inside a plain field.
The round shape follows a fall in two directions as readily as a hexagon does, which is what puts it in shower pans. It is also one of the few formats that reads as period and as modern depending only on the joint color. Mosaic tile is where the other shapes sit.
