Should You Tile Throughout the Whole Ground Floor of the House?

Here at Atlas Ceramics we love tiles!

Ceramic tiles are still one of the most popular choices for bathrooms and kitchens and there are a vast range available, but are they a good choice for your bathroom or kitchen? Moreover, should you consider tiling your entire ground floor and reaping those benefits throughout your home?

It’s certainly a viable choice, and there are some strong pros and cons. In this post, we’ll break those down and answer your question in detail.

The Benefits of Tiles For Your Entire Home

Cost and Convenience

Tiles certainly have many advantages. First of all, they’re cheap and very easy to put into place. This means that the initial cost of renovating will be low. Better yet, is that you’ll also be able to replace tiles individually should one get damaged. If you have wallpaper in a room and that gets scratched, then you’ll have to do at least a whole new wall, whereas something like marble will be expensive to replace.

However, with a ceramic tile, you can quickly and easily cement the new one on to replace a damaged one. Make sure when you buy the tiles that you buy lots of spares. This is because, if they’ve ceased production of your tiles in the future, you’ll be stuck with a big square gap in your pattern.

Maintenance

Another advantage of ceramic tiles is that they’re easy to clean. As the surface is flat and shiny there’s no way that mess can get caught in nooks and crannies or get soaked up into the tiles (which also means they will be less likely to mould). In a kitchen or a bathroom, a lot of liquids are used and regularly spilled which on a carpet or wallpaper would cause serious damage. Fortunately with ceramic tiles, it can simply and easily be wiped off with a jay cloth, meaning the room will generally appear much cleaner than it would with other kinds of flooring.

This makes tiling a great choice for many other parts of your home. Your utility room for example is an area that can be prone to damage, so it will also benefit from the resilience of having tiles.

Many Rooms

Likewise, tiles can work great in living rooms if you constantly have people coming in and out. This is also true for conservatories and porch areas, and is doubly true if you have dogs and cats that bring in all kinds of mud. Being able to simply wipe those mud marks clean is a godsend. And similarly useful, is the fact that any moisture collecting around a window will be less likely to cause permanent water damage and mould.

Design

Another great thing about tiles is that they’re so popular, and this means that there is a wide range of different styles and patterns available. You can go with simple plain white for a very contemporary minimalist look. Gaggles of swans dotted around if you have young children using the bathroom, a different pattern, or even paint your own designs onto the ceramic (which is easy enough to do). Mosaic tiles are particularly attractive in modern decors, as are ceramic and porcelain tiles that are designed to look like granite or limestone. Dark colours, with contrasting patterns made from mirror tiles and other details can be extremely striking in any room.

Tiles have lots of benefits

Even when tiles don’t take up an entire floor or an entire wall, they can still be used in more subtle ways to add to your décor. More basically you can just create borders and skirting boards, or can outline your utilities. This can create a consistent pattern throughout your home, resulting in a more cohesive décor.

You don’t even need to have the same pattern on every tile – but can instead have mostly white with random images dotted around the room. Again this is something you could only achieve with tiles.

Note that ceramic tiles typically have more patterns and colours available as compared with porcelain – keep this in mind when making your choice.

The Argument Against Tiles Throughout Your Home

The down sides of ceramic tiles are that they’re quite brittle and can easily be broken or chipped. In comparison to other types of walls or flooring you are likely to find you quite regularly knock of corners or crack individual tiles. Again though this is negated somewhat by the fact that the tiles are quick and easy to replace so that the damage can quickly and easily be fixed.

Another issue with tiles throughout your home is that they are cold. While they can be insulating, the tiles themselves will often feel very cold underfoot which isn’t a pleasant experience when you’re relaxing in the evening. Again there are ways around the problem – you can use underfloor heating for instance.

More reasons why not to tile your entire home

Tiles can also be more hazardous if you have older relatives or young children living with you – tiles are more slippery and the harder surface can cause more damage should someone fall. Placing a rug in living rooms and other areas can solve this issue, as well as the heat problem.

Another downside is that ceramic tiles are often associated with more old fashioned bathrooms and garish flower patterns. This really need not be the case however and there are a whole host of modern and stylish tiles you can buy. Blacks and silvers currently are great for giving your room a sleeker look. Alternatively, stone colours can create a similar effect to having marble or granite – particularly when used with larger tiles. You can even have the tiles at another angle so that you have diamonds rather than squares on your walls which creates a very novel look.

As you can see then, there are lots of huge benefits to using tiling throughout your home – and any drawbacks can be mitigated. That said, they also aren’t ideal in a number of ways, and so you may choose to use another type of flooring instead. Seeing as tiles are so versatile though, this isn’t an ‘either/or’ kind of decision!