Large Porcelain Tile

You Can Eliminate The Grout By Using Large Tile

When upgrading to new floors, most people are aware that new tiles are bigger than the time when they had theirs installed. However, they don’t know what are the big sizes for an up to date look.

For example, If you have 20×20 or smaller tiles in your home, you may be thinking that 24×24 is a size upgrade.

Today we all want to minimize the grout lines and obtain a clean look on our floors. Since the number of tiles is what causes the grout lines,  It’s much better to use a large format tile.  Therefore, 24×24 tile is no longer an upgrade. It’s almost as old as 20×20 tiles now. The upgrade is 30×30, 32×32, 24×48, 36×36 and over.

Floors Are Always Much Bigger Than The Tile

If you think that these tiles are too big for your floors because your space is not big enough, We have to tell you that the size of the tile has nothing to do with the size of the floors. No matter how big is the tile, floors are much bigger in size. The question is: do you want to cover a 100 square feet room with 25 pieces of 24×24 tiles or 17 pieces of 30×30 or 13 pieces of 24×48 tiles. Logically, fewer tiles will result in fewer grout lines.

Some people may think larger tiles may cause more waste. That’s not true. Most of the time, large tiles yield more cut pieces. Whereas people used to buy 10% extra tile when purchasing 24×24 tiles, we have been suggesting 7% extra for floor tiles over 24×24.

Does The Installation of Large Format Porcelain Tile Cost More?

Regardless of the size, tiles should be installed over well-leveled floors. However, leveling floors prior to installation (Mud-set) adds about $1 per square foot to the job. If there is an existing tile floor, Mud-set also requires the removal and dumping of the old tiles. This process also adds another dollar or $1.25 per square foot to the cost. Moreover, It’s a pretty dusty process. However, this is not an additional cost of installation for large format porcelain tiles. Whether it’s 24×24 or large tiles, this is the cost of Mud-Set installation.

Therefore, thin-set installation and tile over tile installations are very common applications when installing new tiles for its lower installation cost.

Even it’s not ideal, a large format porcelain tile such as 30×30 can also be installed on thin-set just like old 24×24 tiles. However, the installation of tiles larger than 30×30 require clips for leveling or the mortar-mix(mud-set installation)