What tiles to choose for your home

Ceramic or stone tiles. Firstly, choose tiles best suited for the particular room functions. There are basically two types of tiles – ceramic and stone (porcelain). Stone tiles are suitable for outdoors (terraces, balconies, steps, etc). These tiles are resistant to weather elements – frost, water, frequent temperature changes, they don’t crack. Stone tiles are made from stone dust, thermally processed. These tiles almost don’t get water saturated and don’t need any maintenance or water proofing, and they are very hard to scratching.

Ceramic tiles can only be used indoors – bathrooms, kitchens, hallways. New design trends show that tiles can be used even in living rooms. While use of ceramic tiles is limited because they are easier to scratch or break, stone tiles can be used anywhere you want.

Size of tiles. Usually we suggest our customers using smaller tiles for small bathrooms. If the ceiling is low, vertically higher tiles will help create an optical illusion of higher ceiling and if the room is very small horizontally larger tiles will help visually enlarge room (while visually lowering the ceiling). Big size tiles are very difficult to work with – surfaces have to be ideally level, need a lot of cutting if surface area is small. Usually big tiles are used together with some strip of small decorative tiles, achieving some nice design features. Small tiles or mosaic give more freedom to some design solutions – such as creating rounded corners.

Grout lines. High quality tiles can be laid with just 1mm gaps – grout lines are less visible, creating impression of the solid wall. Tiling in this way is much more difficult – tile crosses can not be used and tile guidance is done only by eye. Lower quality tiles in different packages vary by size or colour tone. These variations are minor, but still visible when gaps between tiles are small.

We always advice to grout floor tiles in darker colour – it’s much more practical, because light grout will only look nice when it is new and it’s not possible to keep that way – over time it will get dirty and it will be visible. Wall tiles usually are grouted with lighter than tiles colour grout.

Tile colours. Times when it was fashionable to have bright coloured tiles are passing. Bathrooms are now becoming relaxation rooms not only to have a shower but to relax after work or even have some romance. Too bright colours may cause changes in mood while neutral colours will always be fashionable. Presently cream or white colour tiles with some inserts of brighter tile strips are combined together with contrasting colour accessories.

Easy to clean or non slippery tiles. Sometimes people have impossible requirements for tiles – nonslippery, but easy to clean. Nonslippery tiles have a rough surface and dirt easily sticks to it – cleaning requires more efforts than smooth tiles. Specialists advice on paying more attention to safety in wet rooms (pools, bathrooms, saunas) and then only think about aspects of maintenance.

We always recommend our customers to get some extra tiles - better to have a little more than necessary. Otherwise you may have problems ordering extra tiles – colour tone or size from different order may slightly differ and you may have to wait for few weeks.