The History Of Tile Flooring And Your Bedroom
Tile flooring has been such a versatile medium for flooring, but not only for flooring.
There are so many colours and textures that will have your head spinning.
So why are they so good and why should you also think about putting them in your bedroom?
Tile Flooring For The Bedroom Too?
You better believe it!
Tile Is A Popular Flooring Material For Bedrooms
Finishes are tricky and a lot of people get them wrong in tile flooring, even professionals.
So I am going to give you all the details, starting today with the tile.
But what do we mean when we say tile for interiors?
Well, we’re going to have to go on a history lesson for that one…
Tile is actually the oldest man-made material that we use in interiors.
Archaeologists have found evidence of tiles in Mesopotamia dating back to the early BC era.
Let me tell you the ancient Egyptians had tons of stone around, so you can still see their old floors today.
That says something about how long tiles can last…
The Greeks and Romans weren’t going to get left out either with their tile flooring.
Unique Cement Tiles For Your Bedroom Floor
They started doing things with terracotta the stone mosaics that you can see in places like the ruins you can still see today at Pompei.
Medieval Europe brought in encaustic tiles, which are tiles that have clay coloured all the way through, instead of just a glaze on the top
And then, of course, the blue and white delft tile from the Dutch golden age in the 1600s.
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And we are still using this stuff.
They can look like so many different things, Stone of course, and stone mosaics.
That’s also still being used in very beautiful glass and recycled glass metal.
This is kind of a new thing, but you can use it on vertical surfaces and it looks great. And… even cement.
Now, for those of you who are looking for a unique cement tile, which it’s actually not very easy to find.
How To Choose The Right Floor Tiles For Your Bedroom
There are a couple of crucial decisions that you need to make
The first one is.
Where do you need it?
It could be tub tiles to your entry floor.
Maybe it’s the entire first floor of your house.
As opposed to saying something like the backsplash in a guest bathroom, which is going to get almost nothing.
The third thing that you want to think about is your budget for either the area that you’re redoing or, of course, the whole space that is going to get tiled.
And if you did think about it, both from the material standpoint and from the cost of installation also very important to include now.
Choosing Bedroom Floor Tile
The last thing that you want to consider is what type of tile expresses your design style statement.
So when you are looking at choosing tile for any installation… walls, floors anything, you have two choices here.
You need to make a decision about what the main area of the tile will be.
And that would be called your field tile.
And then the secondary area, if you are going to add an accent, would be your secondary or accent tile.
When you are looking at your budget, here’s the key because the most material that you need to purchase is for your field area or the big expanse.
So that’s where you want to look at options that are a little bit easier on the budget.
And then you can spring a little bit more for some of the accent tiles.
And that’s a way you could go about it.
Professionals make a budget move and flow so that they get the look that they want with maybe a little bit of lux or a little bit of a major statement, but it’s only done in a smaller area.
Porcelain Tiles: A Favorite Choice For Bedroom Floor
So it’s a good tip to remember.
Let me tell you why porcelain is super durable. It’s easy to install which actually can save you money in installation and labour costs.
It’s virtually waterproof. So if you needed to use it in a super wet area like showers and shower floors, absolutely no problem.
And it comes in a huge variety of styles.
Oh my gosh, it can look like everything like wood.
You can do stone…
Of course, it can look like a stone at kind of half the cost. You can do metal as well.
And there is a porcelain tile that you can use around fireplaces and in some speciality areas, and it looks like cold-rolled steel.
It’s amazing. You can even get porcelains that look like cement or plaster finishes, or even other types of tile like cement tile.
Stone Floor Tiles: The Pros And Cons
Natural stone is also a great solution for field tile because it’s extremely durable, but it is considerably pricier.
So I tend to like it a little bit more for maybe accent areas, but it comes in a huge variety of looks and style statements.
Everything from like tumbled limestone if you’re doing something kind of transitional or traditional, and you want that softer look.
See also Are carpet tiles a good choice for bedrooms?
Or maybe a travertine travertines are great Marble who doesn’t love marble? Absolutely.
There are also things like slate and bluestone.
And then, of course, there’s the stone mosaics which work really well if you’re say doing a bathroom area.
And you need that slip coefficient to be super tight, then cutting that stone up into small pieces as they do for mosaics, gives you that extra grip underfoot, which is really useful.
So pro tip… if you’re doing a tile floor, I don’t care where bathrooms your main entry hall skip the polished finish.
I know it’s beautiful, but the reality of it is anybody in wet feet.
Choosing The Right Bedroom Flooring Tile
Just not a good solution.
There are lots of great ones out there.
You can do a matte finish.
You can do a honed, flamed leathered, there are all kinds of finishes out there that you can use when you are working on the floor.
Now, if you’re working on a field tile on the wall, make it a mirror, it doesn’t matter.
Now, let’s talk about accents, and tiles cause, they’re kind of the Jewelry of the tile world so to speak…
And you really want to make a couple of choices here.
You definitely want to choose a tile that references, your style and can also create.
Maybe a focal point.
Cement Tiles In A Bedroom: Professional Suggestions
The thing that I noticed about cement tiles is that they have this very sort of smooth waxed finish.
It’s not shiny though…
It has a bit of a matte look to it, which is very sort of restrained and important.
Now…
If you’re doing more contemporary spaces.
I thought I was going to cry when I saw a tile that had this gorgeous black colour with the dragonfly on it.
Or just the black one, with the inset rectangle in the middle Solids.
In the torso note the little bit of a fleck of shell in it. The groovy mid-century, modern, look of tile flooring.
Like a simple star. Even this Sirolian blue with like a twinkling star in it.
How To Choose Bedroom Flooring Tiles
Well, here are a couple of pointers.
If you are looking for something traditional in tile flooring you are going to typically want products that are smaller scale in the tile.
Terracotta, that’s very big for traditional glazed ceramics, and also very big for traditional Think those blue delft tiles from the 1600s.
Choosing the Right Bedroom Floor Tiles
Perhaps You are, looking for something a little bit more transitional, then you’re going to look for small or large. You can do both scales, that’s not a problem.
Again…
You can use stones or porcelains that look like stone terracotta, but you might want to think about keeping it super clean as opposed to having it really look.
Super-aged Glazed ceramics again have some pattern tiles, but you may want to limit their use.
Maybe you want to do them just in the powder room, or maybe you want to do just a single inset above a cooktop or you know something simple with it.
And then, of course, with transitional.
You want to have a more muted, colour palette and maybe a little bit of a calmer option on some of your tile flooring patterns.
Choosing The Right Floor Tiles For Your Bedroom
Now, if you are more contemporary with things… switch it up a little bit.
You often want large-scale field tiles for contemporary.
I frequently do 36 by 48s because you want to make it long and sleek and like it’s just one big slab of material.
So stones and natural stones are good. Porcelains.
Porcelaines are even better because porcelains can be fired at super large materials, so that’s great and they mimic other materials, which is often great.
If you are doing an accent, often the accent matches or is even simple like this one huge fireplace.
So one last detail when we are talking about tile installations and tile selections, is you need to be mindful of your grouts with tile flooring.
Choosing Flooring Tiles For Your Bedroom
Let’s understand how grouts impact your overall choice: So if you look at a traditional space, typically, the grout is either a light, colour or a cement tone and or it matches the field colour of the tile.
So that it’s meant to blend in and sort of not take away from the importance of the tile.
However, when you start to move into transitional and contemporary, you can start to play with the colour.
How To Install Tile In A Small Room
You want almost no grout line at all.
Think about one 16th of an inch.
You can badger your tile installer to get it that thin.
It takes a bit of a comment, but you can that way it makes all of the materials look uniform and monolithic, which is what you are looking for when you are doing a contemporary tile installation.
It takes a bit of a comment, but you can do it that way it makes all of the materials look uniform and monolithic in tile flooring, which is what you are looking for when you are doing a contemporary tile installation.