Tile Tips Common Buying Mistakes

Don’t go by looks alone! You need to select a tile that will holdup for the use that you will be subjecting the tile. You can pretty much use any tile that you want for walls. Countertops require tile with greater strength and stronger glazes to withstand food stains and acids. Floors require more strength and stronger glazes to withstand grit on the bottom of shoes women in high heel shoes (a 125# woman in high heels exerts 500#/square inch pressure on a floor, much more than a refrigerator!). Interior bathroom floors can use smaller wall tiles as your carpets will clean your shoes of outside grit before they get to the tile. However smaller tile will make small rooms look small and result in much more grout to maintain.

We find that larger floor tiles(16x16 up to 20x20) are well suited for not only floors but countertops, shower walls and ceilings! The larger sizes allow you to obtain drastically more tile at greater strength with dramatically lesser number of grout lines. Less grout lines means a less busy pattern which will make the floor, countertop and/or wall look bigger and also will give you less grout to maintain!