Before you find yourself in front of a wall of sample tiles there is something you should bear in mind – this really isn’t about colour and pattern at first it’s about material. Ceramic, porcelain, natural stone – they all have their own strengths, shortcomings and suitable environments which they should quite frankly be committed to. When you’re ready to buy tile Cardiff wide you’re soon lost in the melee of choices and how quickly you’re enamoured by a colour or pattern before you realise if the material behind it is one that truly deserves the space and lifestyle for which you plan it. This handy guide not only help you decide what might be better for your kitchen and bathrooms, but also what is more fitting for the rest of your home – don’t just be swayed by how it looks and feels now, consider factors such as safety, longevity, price and durability and compare tiles CardiffF options accordingly.
In the hierarchy of home finishes, tiles are a bit out of whack; they’re arguably the most durable choice a homeowner makes, yet they seem to be one of the most visually obtrusive. Choosing them correctly is a one-time investment of time for multiple years of satisfaction, whereas choosing them wrong is an expensive, disruptive error. That’s why, ahead of choosing a specific product, working through the following considerations is time well spent.
This guide takes you through ten different factors, from colour, to scale and texture, from how rooms have been selected, to the finishing touches that pull the whole look together, for a more in-depth, more structured overview than you’d get from just a quick flick through a showhouse or the scrolling of inspiration pictures online.

Why Tiles Have Such a Powerful Effect on a Room

Tiles tend to be the biggest span of continuous surface area in a room of any material choice, whether on a big kitchen splashback, an entire bathroom, or as a whole floor throughout a house. Because of this, whatever colour or pattern or texture you choose sets the visual tone of the space on which the whole other room will then hang. Many decorating choices (cushions, a lampshade) can be changed pretty easily if they need to be; larger choices, like a tiled bathroom wall or tiled kitchen floor, represent a genuine financial and logistical commitment to changing the content of a room.
As a result, getting it right on tiles is worth the effort and the outlay: a good one can make the entire room come together more than the sum of its parts. It can also push the visual focus of the room, while also setting its tone more intentionally, making the paint colours come to life, making the furniture choices feel more considered, and the whole room more ordered in terms of finish and form. This can make a real difference in the way the house is experienced from a bird’s eye view.

Choosing Tiles That Complement Your Existing Style

Start With Your Home Before diving into particular tiles, it’s good to be a little truthful about the prevailing style of your property, or at least the style you’re aiming for if you are part-way through a renovation. A beautiful tile on display or used in an online photo might not always be right for every property and usually, the best choices for your tiling are those that complement your home rather than clash with it.

Matching Tiles to a Period or Contemporary Property

Period properties, Victorian terraces, Edwardian semis, converted farmhouses tend to be better suited to tiles with authentic historical references, encaustic designs and metro-style tiles, natural stone with texture, variation etc. Equally, newly built or modernised homes often lend themselves better to more plain, minimal choices and larger-sized, porcelain tiles, subtle surface textures, muted colour palettes and delicate tonal variations. Neither approach is better, the trick is to embrace the innate character of each property rather than fighting against it.
It’s also a consideration in the context of a period or character property that has been altered in the past. An original timber home that has already had a contemporary extension and kitchen may benefit from tiles that sit somewhere between, balancing the older and newer elements of a property rather than dominating the main scheme.

Using Tile Colour to Shape a Room’s Mood

And colour is one of the most immediate ways a tile can alter the feel of a space. Whites, soft, subtle colours, gentle greys, creamy tones tend to create a relaxed, calm feel, and will make a space seem larger and brighter – invaluable in a small space or one lacking in natural light such as many small bathrooms and all downstairs cloakrooms. Darker tones, deep charcoal and inky blues or warmer terracottas can transform the impact of a space, with more drama and character, and can add depth, richness and a feeling of cosiness, ideal for larger, more generous spaces where you can relax in the comfort of that density – in a statement bathroom or interesting country-style kitchen, for example.
It’s also worth taking into account how the colour of a tile appears in the room you are working with, under your specific lighting conditions, in both natural and artificial light, as this can vary quite dramatically from the showroom display to your space with its dimmer lighting with a warm glow or fewer daylight hours. To make the most accurate judgement, it’s always best to take along a sample of the wall and flooring colours, worktops and fixtures you may be retaining, as those will be more costly and problematic to change if you later decide you don’t like the tile with them.

The Impact of Tile Size on Small and Large Spaces

There’s more to do with size than just design an efficient pattern – size has an impact on how the space feels in a range of different ways. Seeing your planned size sample in a room, with light and with your chosen furniture can be useful so that you can judge your preferred size fairly against your choice of decor. And, not just for practical reasons, but while you’re there it can help to see how that sized tile will read in the room against your fixed features and focal points in the room, including your doors and windows, and any tricky bits where you might need to cut many small pieces.
Small tiles have more grout joints and breaks and so break up a wall surface more whereas larger format tiles can make a space feel much bigger as the eye takes in fewer joints and breaks in the eye line to join together the room as one. In rooms that feel quite grand, larger tiles can help them feel more expansive, even if the room size itself isn’t that large. And small format tiles in the kitchen or bathroom, can offer the eye something different and more detailed to look at if the room itself is quite large. Of course, how ‘big’ your space seems is more of an illusion and depends greatly on how you use lighting and colour, but size can alter the perception of space as well..

Texture and Finish: Matte, Gloss and Everything Between

Finish has a huge influence on the look and feel of a space, as well as its practical use. A gloss finish is high reflecting and will give a space a brighter, airier feel, and particularly suits smaller bathrooms or darker rooms where you can do with that little bit of extra bounce of light. Matt finishes give a much softer feel and are a much more contemporary looking finish, as well as being an effective way to hide water marks, finger smudges and minor scuffs and scratches so we’re seeing these quite often for floors and family areas that get a lot of foot traffic.
A textured finish, whether it’s a subtle relief pattern or a more real (and tangy) stone texture, will give a surface another dimension that a flat, smooth finish can’t. The only thing to be aware of with textured floor tiles is that depending on the application, they might be more difficult to keep clean. Two finishing combinations, such as a matt floor with a glossy wall, is a look that we’re seeing more frequently and is a great way of introducing that extra dimension without needing to bring in a change in colour or pattern.

Transforming Kitchens With the Right Tile Choice

Choosing a tiling feature or splashback for your kitchen is one of the most impactful design choices you will make, and one of the most obvious tiling choices in your house – located right in the eyeline of anybody eating, cooking or just passing through the room. Get the wrong splashback design and you can ruin an expensive Kitchen cabinetry and worktop set-up; find the right one and it might become the highlight feature of your kitchen.
Metro tiles are still often the first port of call in a home, offering a flexible traditional or contemporary aesthetic that is also very practical for a cooking space. Alternatively a full wall of large porcelain slabs – mimicking natural stone or concrete textures, and having the same minimal grout joints – is creating a clean, architectural effect that’s a feature of many contemporary kitchens. It may be worth popping into a tile shop Cardiff has at this point, since you will be able to see the full slabs in proportion, rather than trying to interpret them from a small sample or online photo.
Floor tiling in the kitchen needs to stand up to a lot of use as well as looking the part, which is why a lot of owners opt for modern porcelain options for their properties in order to get the right balance of durability and practicality.

Elevating Bathrooms Through Considered Tile Selection

Bathroom tiling is perhaps the room where quality makes the biggest difference to the ‘end feeling’, as so much of the room is covered in tiles. Here are some things to think about in particular in the way of bathroom tiling:

• Slip resistance choose from slip-resistant floor tiles, particularly in areas where you would walk wet floors at a bath or shower
• Large format wall tiles  reduce the number of grout joints for easier and quicker cleaning.
• Co-ordinate  plan your wall and floor tiles to work together for a more cohesive overall scheme.
• Porosity and water resistant – be sure to check the properties of natural stone tiles you choose.
• Focal points consider a plan for a feature wall, decorative niche or any other accent to your tiled bathroom before planning the complete scheme.

A five-star bathroom is much easier to achieve if you put thought into the type, size, colour and pattern of your tiling, ensuring it is right for your room and made up of quality products. The end result will be a bathroom that is ‘beautifully finished’ rather than an afterthought.

Using Tiles to Create Flow Between Rooms

In open-plan homes, where adjacent rooms are visible to each other, tile selection can also influence how cohesive or disjointed the home may feel. When the same or a harmonizing floor is used in the kitchen, dining and living areas, there is an element of visual flow that helps to unify an open-plan space – a room with visually separate areas doesn’t actually feel like one room.
Where a change of finish is unavoidable, using a transition strip, a specific tile position (such as orientating in the same direction), and ensuring the transition location is well thought through, makes the change feel purposeful rather than abrupt.
This applies in lesser or partial open-plan situations too. Continuing a tiled finish into adjoining hallways and utility rooms makes for a home that visually flows very easily, without it actually being a fully open-plan floor plan.
Where this may not be entirely practical, perhaps with a change from tiled to timber or to carpeted floors, adding an accent colour or grout colour in the transitional area, or continuing with a directional change in the orientating of the tile can also create the visual flow that adds nothing more than is minimally necessary, to the space.

Statement Tiles as a Focal Point

Sometimes one statement doesn’t have to be one statement. An eye-catching, patterned or vibrantly coloured tile used carefully as an accent, to create a feature wall behind a bath, or as a floor in a space of small but high impact – like a cloakroom for example – can genuinely add character to a space without the need for all other elements to be equally eye-catching.
The key to the statement tile is to keep the rest of the room pared back to give the high-impact element somewhere to be high-impact without the room becoming over-busy as a result. Walls, other floor coverings, cupboards and fit-outs are better kept more plain to give the tiles time to be appreciated and not fight for attention with other busy tile choices elsewhere.
Small spaces are ideal for this: a bold design in a cloakroom or utility room is a lower-stakes investment compared to an open-plan kitchen, and the smaller scale makes it a more manageable way to test a daring tile design.

Getting the Grout and Layout Details Right

Choosing the right grout colour and layout can make a tile  even the best  seem completely underwhelming when it’s installed incorrectly. Grout colour can have a huge influence on how a tile looks, contrasting grout makes the individual tiles pop more and gives you more of a graphic pattern, while the matching grout allows the beautiful texture and colour to really be the focus. And don’t forget about layout, it might seem inconsequential but you can choose everything from a simple grid to a herringbone or basketweave pattern and it will make an enormous difference.
Be sure to ask questions and check out options with your supplier, many tiles can be displayed as a pattern sample to view in person which can help you decide on everything from mosaics, to metro tiles, to natural stone options. And a professional to install is an absolute must for anything larger than a splashback – a professionally laid tiled surface will ensure you get that beautiful look you saw in-store rather than a not-quite right alternative.