Our top tips for choosing tiles

Of all the choices that need to be made when renovating or building, Interior Designer Becc Burgmann finds tiles are what can make people sweat the most with nerves. Do they work, clash, are they too big, too small, will they date, what grout do I use? It’s understandable to feel overwhelmed!

To help keep the stress levels down and keep it simple, Becc recommends that first-time renovators or builders keep the tile rule of three in mind –

• One for the floor
• One for the shower (either all of the shower or just a feature wall) and shower niche
• One for the rest of the bathroom

If that’s still slightly overwhelming, let’s break it down further –

• One for the floor
• One for all of the walls and shower, including the niche

A rule of thumb for the size of the tiles, because proportion is everything when designing any space:

• Put the largest size tile on the floor, for example, 300 x 600
• Put the same size or smaller sized tiles on the walls and in the shower

Becc recommends having some fun when laying tiles, she loves a great mosaic on the floor because the floor is often the first thing you notice when you walk into a bathroom. Another favourite is the herringbone pattern and smaller rectangle tiles laid in this configuration on both the floor and as a feature wall.

Other common floor lays are ‘brick’ lay as per the side of a house. The stack pattern also looks terrific for large 600×900 tiles on walls.

A final tip – always run the floor tiles parallel to the walls. Why? Because it makes a space look bigger!