Tile showers are one of our specialties, and we have written about what a tile shower actually involves. But plenty of the tile that goes into houses around Newberg goes on floors: entries, mudrooms, laundry rooms and bathroom floors.
A tile floor is a different job from a shower, with its own ways to go wrong. It is also the most expensive floor in the house to install, so it is worth knowing where it genuinely pays for itself and where a good vinyl plank does the job for less.
Where tile earns its cost
Tile is the only floor in a house that is actually sealed. Water, mud and grit do nothing to it. That matters most in a few rooms.
- The entry and the mudroom. For most of the year in the Willamette Valley, everything comes through these doors wet. Tile shrugs off standing water from boots and the grit that slowly dulls softer floors.
- The laundry room. This is where a washer hose will eventually fail. On tile, that means a mop and a bad afternoon rather than a new subfloor.
- Full bathroom floors. Water on the floor is a certainty rather than a risk.
Outside those rooms, tile is a choice rather than a need. It is cold underfoot, hard on anything dropped, tiring to stand on for long, and slow to install. In a kitchen, a living room or a powder room, a rigid-core luxury vinyl plank is usually the better value. The best flooring for every room goes through the house room by room.
Why tile floors crack
Nearly every cracked tile floor has the same cause, and it is not the tile. It is movement underneath.
Tile and grout are rigid. A wood-framed floor flexes slightly when you walk on it and moves with the seasons as the house takes on and gives up moisture. Put rigid tile directly over a floor that flexes, and the tile and grout take the strain until they crack, often along a line that follows a joist or a seam in the subfloor below.
So the work that decides whether a tile floor lasts is the work you never see.
The subfloor has to be stiff enough. Most Westside houses have wood subfloors over a crawlspace. Some are stiff enough for tile as they are, and some need reinforcing first. We check before quoting, because it changes the job.
A proper underlayment goes between the wood and the tile. Either a cement backer board or a decoupling membrane, which is a layer designed to let the subfloor move slightly without passing that movement up into the tile.
Movement joints go where they belong. Tile needs a flexible joint at the walls and, across larger areas, at intervals in the field, rather than hard grout packed tight to every edge. It is invisible when it is done right, and one of the most common omissions when it is not.
This is also why tile usually cannot go straight over whatever is there now. What we find under your old floor covers what tends to turn up once the old floor is lifted.
Choosing the tile itself
Grip in wet rooms. A polished tile that looks beautiful in the showroom is a hazard inside the front door on a wet November evening. For entries, mudrooms and bathrooms, choose a matte or textured surface, and ask about slip resistance for floors that will get wet. Smaller tiles help too, because more grout lines mean more grip underfoot.
Size and flatness. Large-format tiles look clean, with fewer grout lines, but they need a flatter floor beneath them. The bigger the tile, the more any dip or hump in the subfloor shows up as an edge standing proud of its neighbor. Large tiles are very achievable; they just add preparation.
Porcelain for the hard-working rooms. Porcelain is denser and absorbs less water than ordinary ceramic, which is why it is the usual choice for floors that get wet and gritty. Natural stone is beautiful and asks for more care, particularly around sealing.
Grout is the part you live with
People choose the tile carefully and the grout in thirty seconds, and the grout is what they end up looking at.
- Color. Bright white grout on an entry floor will not stay white. A mid-tone gray, or a color close to the tile, hides the traffic an entry sees every day.
- Width. Narrower joints mean less grout to keep clean, where the tile allows it.
- Sealing. Standard cement grout is porous. Sealing it resists staining and makes cleaning easier. It does not make grout waterproof, and it needs redoing over time.
The practical things nobody mentions
Height. Tile, with its underlayment and mortar, usually sits higher than the vinyl or carpet it replaces. Doors may need trimming, and the transitions at doorways need planning, especially where tile meets carpet or wood-look plank.
Time. Tile takes days, not hours. Mortar has to cure before grouting, and grout has to cure before the floor goes back into normal use. A laundry room or bathroom will be out of action longer than its size suggests. How long new flooring actually takes sets out realistic timings.
Cold. Tile in an entry in January is cold. A good mat inside the door helps. If you want warm tile, radiant heat has to be planned before the floor is laid, not after.
Tile or luxury vinyl plank?
- Choose tile for a mudroom, a laundry room, a full bathroom floor, or an entry that takes a real beating from wet boots and dogs, when the budget allows.
- Choose LVP for a powder room, a kitchen, an entry on a tighter budget, or anywhere the subfloor would need significant work before it could take tile.
Neither is the wrong answer. They are different amounts of money for different degrees of indifference to water.
See it in your own entry
We look at the subfloor, the doorways and the rooms on either side before we quote, so the price includes the preparation rather than discovering it later. The estimate is free, and we bring tile samples to the house so you can see them in your own light.
One thing to know up front: we do not take on repairs to tile floors we did not install, because we cannot stand behind the work underneath. For new tile, Norman's has been working from Newberg since 1978, and every install carries a ten year labor warranty on top of the manufacturer's warranty on the material. See tile, or book an estimate.
