Victorian Floor Tiles

About

A Victorian geometric floor is not a tile, it is a kit of parts. Squares, triangles, octagons, rectangles, hexagons and border strips, in a fixed palette of body-coloured clays, assembled into a pattern designed around the specific dimensions of your hallway. That is why it looks right in a period house and why a printed imitation never quite does. We stock Original Style's Victorian floor range in the full colour set — Dover White, black, red, buff, blue, green and the pinks — alongside the matching borders and corner pieces. Start with the border, not the field Almost every Victorian floor is designed from the edges inwards. The border and its corner pieces set the width of the margin, and what is left in the middle determines which field pattern will fit without awkward cuts against the skirting. Measure the hall at several points first — few Victorian halls are truly parallel. These are body-coloured, not glazed The colour runs the full depth of the tile rather than sitting on the surface, which is precisely why these floors survive a century of use: wear does not reveal a different colour underneath. It also means the surface is matt and slightly porous, and wants sealing after laying and occasionally thereafter. Allow for the cutting, and the labour A geometric floor is slow to lay and generates far more cutting than a plain floor. Order generously — the usual 10% wastage allowance is not enough for a patterned geometric, and 15% is more realistic on a complex layout with a border. Find a fitter who has laid one before; it is a genuinely different skill from laying format tile. Sub-floor and damp In an original Victorian hallway the floor is often laid on earth or lime, with no modern damp-proof membrane. This needs assessing before anything is laid — a beautiful floor over a damp sub-floor will fail, and it will fail from underneath where nothing can be done about it. Explore more: Victorian borders · all Original Style · hallway floor tiles For a classic oct