When you know how, tiling the walls and floor of your bathroom can be simple.
Follow our step-by-step guide to bathroom tiling if you want to update your bathroom and are completely confident in your DIY abilities. You’ll learn everything you need to know to succeed whether you’re tiling your bathroom’s walls or floor.
A fashionable and useful option for any bathroom or en-suite are ceramic and porcelain tiles. They create an impermeable barrier that prevents water from entering more porous and dangerous areas of your house. Bathroom tiles are quite inexpensive and easy to install, giving you more money for the remainder of your bathroom makeover job.
What you’ll require
Do you need some ideas for remodelling your bathroom? Check out these bathroom tiling ideas and advice. Here are the things you’ll need to get going once you’ve chosen the tile’s colour, shape, and size:
- Ceiling tiles
- tiles’ adhesive
- tile spacers
- Grout
- ruler tape
- Holy grail
- Wooden length (to make a gauging stick)
- Marking tools: felt-tip pens or pencils
- Trowel
- Hole trowel
- cut tiles
- a tile file
- Spreader of grout
- Finishing grout
- Clawhammer
- sponge
- Bucket
- Clothes with several uses
tiling a bathroom wall
- Calculate how many tiles you’ll need to cover your wall area first, then add 10% to that amount. This makes room for future breakages and spare parts, if necessary.
- For purposes of colour matching, attempt to buy all of your tiles from the same batch. The batch number is printed on the box.
- Make sure your walls are flat, clean, and sanded before getting ready to tile them. To get the glue to stick, you might need to score the plaster with a trowel that has been notched.
- It could be necessary to seal porous tiles before you start if you’re utilising them.
- Use a piece of wood that is about half the length of the wall you are tiling to create a measuring stick to ensure a symmetrical design. Lay it out on the ground, then arrange the tiles and spacers along the length of the stick, marking the locations of each with a pencil.
- Repeat the process with a different stick and lay the tiles widthways to determine the width of your tiles.
- With a pencil and a spirit level, draw a vertical line at the midpoint of the wall’s width. The wall’s height should be adjusted similarly. Now, you need to have vertical and horizontal lines that meet in the centre.
- In order to create a grid for the tiles on your walls, measure the beginning and ending points of each tile using your gauging sticks and mark them in pencil. At the top, bottom, left, and right, check that the first and last tiles are of the same size.
- The first tile should be placed at the bottom with spacers. Mark the area where it needs to be trimmed to fit the space, and then cut the tile accordingly.
- Apply glue to the back of the tile using a notched trowel, then press it into position.
- Place spacers in between each tile as you go, leaving space for grouting.
- Allow the tiles to completely dry before grouting the entire installation.
- Apply the grout to the walls using a spreader or grout float to ensure that it is evenly distributed and leaves no air bubbles. Removing any extra grout.
- Give the tiles a moist cloth to wipe after 15 minutes.
- Finally, spray a grout protection on the tiles to prevent water or limescale from permeating the grout. Find out more cleaning advice for grout here.
Steps for tiling a bathroom floor
- Make sure the bathroom floor is thoroughly clean, dry, and level before you tile it. You can tile straight over concrete if that is your floor. Prior to tiling, primed plywood must be used to cover wood floors.
- Use the same procedures you used to tile the wall to determine the midpoints.
- With spacers, dry lay your tiles, working from the centre outwards toward the walls or the closest fixture, such as the pedestal of a sink, bathtub, or toilet.
- Mark the final complete tile before the wall or item. Draw a line at the endpoint from one wall to the other if you are working on a concrete floor. If you’re dealing with plywood, drill a batten into the endpoint after first looking for any concealed cables and pipes.
- Work parallel to the previous direction as you repeat this step.
- You should now have two battens or straight lines, which will leave a space that can accommodate complete tiles.
- Apply the tiles in a nice pattern to the floor using adhesive, making sure that they are all flat and straight as you go.
- If using battens, take them out at this time.
- Create templates for the pedestals surrounding the toilet and sink using paper. Tile clippers should then be used to cut and sand tiles according to this blueprint. Apply glue.
- Apply the tiles to the edges at this time. Since the distance between the final complete tile in each row and the wall may not be constant, measure it. Adhere the tile after cutting it to size.
- Use the same procedure as for walls to grout your tiles after allowing them to dry.
Aftercare
- Till the adhesive has completely dried, avoid walking on or applying pressure to your floor tiles.
- You may avoid frequently redoing the grout in your bathroom by using a grout protector spray to make it simpler to clean and extend its life.
- When cleaning tiles, only use solutions made for the substance because using the wrong one could permanently harm the tile’s surface.
- On tiles with sealant, avoid using steam cleaners.
