Choosing tiles for your family home’s floors can be a fantastic, durable and sustainable choice. There are so many options now, with colours and patterns to suit any home.

Yet, many homeowners are put off by this type of flooring, and choose tiles only for their bathrooms and laundry.

Thinking them too hard, or too cold, I see homeowners avoid them for their main flooring. However, they’re a brilliant and affordable flooring choice when you understand the terminology, know how to choose well, and can make a great selection for your home.

In this episode, I speak with Frances Cosway. Frances is an interior designer, principal of White Pebble Interiors, and author of “Your Forever Home”. We talk about choosing tiles for your family home’s floors. Whether you’re renovating or building, tiles are a great option for your floors. Not only your bathrooms and laundry, but your main floors too.

During our conversation, we dive into …

• the different tile materials and terminology
• what to know about the various tile types
• tile batching
• tips to get a great result with tiled floors

I’ve chosen tiles over timber for personal projects of mine … as has Frances. I did it for affordability reasons, and because there was an existing timber through the original part of the home that was going to be tricky to match with a newer product.

This was a project my husband and I did a renovation of, and it added a large, open plan kitchen / living / dining pavilion onto the rear, which also contained a bathroom, butler’s pantry and laundry.

Timber would have seriously impacted the budget overall, I still would have had a tiled laundry and bathroom I had to coordinate, and the original floors which ran into this new extension.

So I chose a lovely grey, 600 x 300mm tile with a matt finish and a slight pattern to it.
Thermally, it worked far better, because being adhered directly to the slab, they help with thermal mass and don’t break that management of the indoor air temperature.

They felt lovely underfoot, were super easy to clean and maintain and I chose a matching grout colour and rectified tile, so the impact over a large area was that it gave a really consistent colour to the floor which helped the area feel really spacious too.

Plus it was actually much easier to coordinate all types of furniture and other colours with too.

Have you thought about tiles as an option? Let’s learn more about tiles and choosing them for your family home’s floors.

I hope you enjoy this episode. Listen now.

INTERIOR DESIGN 101: GAIN CLARITY AND CONFIDENCE FOR THE INTERIOR DESIGN OF YOUR FUTURE HOME

Would you like to simplify your choices, and have total clarity and confidence that your interior design will help create your beautiful, functional, feel-good home?

Interior Design 101 is a self-study, DIY program. It contains the full version of all interviews from the podcast, plus extra content specifically created for Interior Design 101.

In this full interview featured inside Interior Design 101, Frances and I also talk about digital printing on tiles, which is how a lot of the patterns on tiles is achieved these days. Frances shares some awesome and key tips to know before choosing digitally printed tiles.

In addition, we talk about grout colours and how to test your grout choice. We also talk about dealing with corners and how to get the best results with your tile setout.

You’ll also find full transcripts, videos, checklists, guides and so much good stuff to support you in the Interior Design of your renovation, new home or smaller project.

Interior Design 101 has been designed to help you gain clarity and confidence in all those selections and decisions you need to make for the finishes, fixtures, colours, materials and items you’ll be living with everyday.

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:

Find White Pebble Interiors online >>> CLICK HERE

And on Facebook >>> CLICK HERE

And Instagram >>> CLICK HERE

Frances Cosway’s book, “Your Forever Home” >>> CLICK HERE

To learn more about the self-study, online program, Interior Design 101 >>> CLICK HERE

To see the toxicity of laminate flooring >>> CLICK HERE