Tiles are thin objects, usually square or rectangular in shape. A tile is a manufactured piece of hard-wearing material such as ceramic, stone, metal, baked clay, or even glass, generally used for covering roofs, floors, walls, or other objects such as tabletops. Alternatively, tile can sometimes refer to similar units made from lightweight materials such as perlite, wood, and mineral wool, typically used for wall and ceiling applications.
Why Are Good Tiles Necessary?
Tiles play an essential role in decorating your interior designs. If you want to upgrade your floors, walls, backsplash, showers, or bathrooms, flooring contractors can help you with tile installation that is not only beautiful but practical as well. Trust me, you really do want to get tiles that match your rooms perfectly. But most of the time we don’t really know what sort of tiles will fit with our desired interiors.
So, with this article, you’ll be able to distinguish what sort of tiles are good for you and how you’ll be able to choose the correct types of tiles.
Sometimes, for decorating your place you only choose tiles that are good for the appearance but are not at all durable.
Always remember tiles play an important role in setting the look and feel of the house. Tiles are used to create the desired ambiance.
Delivering thermal, chemical, and mechanical characteristics, tiles are resistant to impact and can absorb the shock of certain impacts.
A good quality lot of tile will have tiles that are the same size or extremely close to the same size. It is preferred to have small grout lines. If the tiles vary in size, then it is necessary to have larger grout joints to compensate for the different size tiles.
How to Distinguish between Good and Bad Tiles?
I know it can be a difficult job to identify the right quality of tiles for your bliss!
But through the help of this article, you’ll be able to differentiate how you can actually purchase the right and good quality tiles.
Now before moving on further a very common question that people always ask:
“How can you tell if a tile is good or not?”
This is how it goes there are two standards of tiles: the AAA Grade tiles and the other is B Grade tiles. But you’ll always get the best with tile flooring Sammamish.
So How Will You Know The Difference Between These Two Grades of Tiles??
As we go through this article you’ll be able to find all your desired answers.
In B Grade tile, you’ll notice the following things:
- You’ll notice some broken selvedge (an edge produced during manufacture that prevents it from unraveling.)
- The flatness will not be that perfect.
- There might also be some distortion in the shape.
While in AAA Grade tiles you will see that everything is well textured and perfectly finished. In short, you will be satisfied in every way!!
There will not be any broken selvedge, the flatness will be perfect and there will not be any distortions in the shape as well!!!
How will you distinguish between the flatness of these two qualities of tiles?
Ok, now this is a very interesting question!!!
Isn’t it??
It’s very important that you know how to check the flatness of the tiles which you are buying as it will give you evidence of whether the tiles are of good quality or not!!
As you won’t be carrying a FLATNESS CHECKING MACHINE with you!!
So, just take two of your desired tiles or the tiles you want to buy. Then stack the two piles face-to-face. If you see that there is a gap between the tiles that means the tiles are of bad quality.
Now, there might be a very small gap that doesn’t mean the quality of the tiles are bad, it’s made by humans after all. And “To Err is Man.”
In short, the smaller the gap, the better the quality of your tiles.
And another way to check it is if the quality of the tiles is very good then between the two stacks of tiles if you try to insert a very thin paper it will not slide inside.
Isn’t it really helpful!!
Using Water Absorption to Check The Quality of The Tiles.
The other way you can cross-check the qualities of your tiles is by Water Absorption.
Let’s illustrate how you can do it!!
Take a bottle of water and pour it into the backside of your desired tile. If the water gets absorbed inside that means the quality is very poor. But if the water stays onto the surface of your tile that means it’s of better quality.
But these sort of water-absorbing tiles are mainly used for bathrooms and kitchens. BUT NOT FOR YOUR ROOMS OR OFFICES!!. As they soak the water inside. So, always make sure to use good quality tiles for your rooms.
And BOOM!!! You got your water absorption quality checked.
Knock The Tiles For Quality Check.
Are there any other ways to check for the quality of tiles??
YES, THERE IS!!!
You can try to knock the tiles to check for the quality. When you knock on the tiles you’ll find differences in the sound!! That’s the sound of the quality of the tiles.
If you hear that the sound of the tiles is bigger or louder and clearer.
That’s where the sweet-spot lies!!
This means your tiles are of good quality and you are good to purchase!!!
How to Choose The Correct Size of Tiles?
Now, a piece of bonus information for choosing your desired size tiles!!
If you have a very big house then choose big size tiles. If your sitting room is bigger than 40sqm then it’s better to choose an 80x80cm size.
For bedrooms, we choose sizes 60x60cm and 150x600mm or 150x800mm for Wood Finish Tiles.
The kitchen and washrooms can go with sizes 300x600mm for walls. And 300x300mm for floor tiles
Hopefully, the article was of some help to you. Now, I believe after reading it you’ll never fumble in distinguishing the quality of the tiles!!