Floor Tile

Floor tile is unforgiving. A flat, stable substrate is what keeps a large floor from telegraphing every dip and high spot once the tile is down, and no amount of skill with a trowel makes up for a subfloor that wasn’t prepared. Most of what separates a good tile floor from a bad one happened before the first tile was set.

Flatness first

Tile floors fail in two ways: they crack, or they show lippage, where one tile edge sits higher than its neighbour. Both come from the substrate. Cracks follow movement in the subfloor or a crack in the slab. Lippage follows a floor that wasn’t flat enough for the tile size going onto it.

We check flatness across the whole floor before quoting, not just at the edges. Wood subfloors get stiffened where they flex and levelled with self-leveller or a mortar bed. Concrete slabs get ground at high spots, filled at low ones, and checked for moisture. Cracks in a slab get isolated with a membrane so the tile above doesn’t follow them. It’s slow work and it’s the job.

Uncoupling and movement

Tile doesn’t move. Houses do. A wood subfloor expands and shrinks with the seasons; a slab cures and settles; a heated floor cycles warm and cool every day. An uncoupling membrane between the substrate and the tile lets the two move independently, and it’s standard on our floors over wood and on every heated floor. Movement joints, soft joints filled with colour-matched silicone instead of grout, go where the floor changes direction, meets a wall, or runs long. Skip them and the floor will make its own, through a tile.

Heated floors

Electric heated floors are on most of our bathroom and many of our kitchen jobs now. We build them on an uncoupling membrane with the heating cable set into the channels, cover it, then tile. The electrician connects it; we make sure the cable is protected and the floor stays flat. Done this way the tile survives the daily warming and the floor is warm within minutes of switching on.

Layout and transitions

A floor’s layout starts at the door and at the longest sightline. We set out so full tiles land where you enter and where the eye travels, cuts hide under cabinets and along the least visible wall, and the grid runs true through doorways into the next room. Transitions to hardwood or carpet are planned so the tile finishes at the right height with a clean profile. Stairs get full treads, mitred nosings or a stone cap. Baseboards and cabinets sit on top of the finished floor, never the other way round.

Materials for floors

Porcelain for almost everything: dense, hard, stable, slip-rated options for wet rooms, and every look from limestone to oak to concrete. Large-format porcelain, 24 by 48 and up, gives the continuous surface people want in open plans, and it’s covered on our large-format tile page. Natural stone floors, limestone and marble mostly, are beautiful and need sealing and softer cleaning; see natural stone. Ceramic for light-traffic areas where budget and colour matter. Mosaic on shower floors and in small rooms where slope and grip matter.

Outdoor porcelain

Exterior porcelain pavers, 20 millimetres thick and rated for freeze-thaw, have become one of the best patio surfaces there is, and one of the fastest-growing parts of our floor work in Abbotsford, Langley and Surrey. The tile is easy. The base is everything: compacted, drained, sloped away from the house, and jointed so water gets out. Built right, it looks like the interior floor stepped outside and it survives Fraser Valley winters.

Where the floor is

Kitchen floors run under the cabinets and out into the dining room; the sequence is on our kitchen renovations page. Bathroom floors are small, often heated, and meet a shower or a curbless entry; see bathroom tile. Entries, mudrooms, laundry rooms, hallways and basement suites round out the rest.

Older homes in Vancouver, North Vancouver and Burnaby need the most floor prep; a century of settling doesn’t take large-format tile without work. Newer homes across Surrey, Langley and the Tri-Cities need flatness checks too, because new framing keeps settling for a couple of years. Our city pages, from Vancouver to Chilliwack, cover the local specifics.

Send us a photo of the room, the tile you’re considering, and roughly how many square feet. Request a quote and we’ll tell you what the floor underneath needs first.