Bathroom Tiles

About

A bathroom is the most demanding room in the house to tile and the least forgiving to get wrong. It is small, so every decision is visible. It is wet, so the specification matters. And it is the room most likely to be lived with for fifteen years without being touched again. What follows is the advice we give across the counter in Ascot, in the order the decisions actually need making. Decide the floor first Almost everyone chooses the wall tile first and then tries to find a floor that works with it. Do it the other way round. The floor has the hardest job — it must be safe wet, it must cope with a heated screed if you have one, and it will be the largest uninterrupted area in the room. Once the floor is settled, the walls have something to answer to. Slip resistance is not the same as texture A tile can look textured and still be poor underfoot when wet. For a bathroom floor, and particularly for a wet room or a level-access shower, look for a stated slip rating rather than a description. Ask us if it is not on the page — this is the single specification most worth checking and the one people most often skip. Small rooms, large tiles The old advice that small rooms need small tiles is mostly wrong. Fewer grout lines make a small bathroom read as larger and calmer, and a large-format tile on the floor with the same tile on the walls is one of the most effective tricks there is. The limit is practical rather than visual: large formats need a flat substrate and they need somewhere to be cut. Where to spend, and where not to The most rewarding place to spend is a small one — a shower niche, the wall behind a freestanding bath, a run of decorative tile above a basin. Plain, well-chosen field tile everywhere else costs a fraction and makes the expensive area work harder. Tiling the whole room in something remarkable rarely reads as luxurious; it reads as busy. Underfloor heating changes the specification If there is heat under the floor, the adhesive, the grout and some