Porcelain and ceramic tiles are popular choices for bathrooms. If you are looking for bathroom ideas using tiles, you must have come across these options. In this article we will discuss why porcelain can be a good/bad option for bathrooms. When you decide for a tiling for your bathroom, you must keep some things in mind – aesthetics, slipperiness and imperviousness. When tiling your bathroom, you must know that you cannot use the same bathroom tiles for the floor and the walls, as both of them have different requirements.
Floor: Forgetting about the aesthetics for a while, as that completely falls on personal preference, a good tile choice for the bathroom floors must not be excessively slippery as that might lead to accidents which no one wants. You also want those bathroom tiles which are impervious. Keep in mind that no tiling solution is completely waterproof, but you must try and get the one which is the most impervious. Porcelain is a good option in this case as it is not slippery and has very impervious variants as well. Size is also something you must keep in mind while choosing tiles for your bathroom floors. It relates both to design flexibility and slip-resistance. Design flexibility is not an issue nowadays as builders are extremely talented and can do some great stuff without you having to worry a lot (At Irish Tiling Services, we take care of all of this). Slip-resistance, however, is a concern and even more so because the design choices must be kept in mind as well. Slip-resistance is rated by a measure called the coefficient of friction (COF). Larger tiles have a COF of 0.60 or higher. This must be kept in mind while choosing the size of the individual tiles. Look at the bathroom ideas in this article, they all qualify these criterias.
Walls: People don’t have to worry about slipping on the walls so almost any kind of bathroom tiles (which are suitable for wet locations) work fine. In this aspect too, porcelain is a good choice; from the ubiquitous 4 1/4-inch white squares to large-format tiles of almost any size. Some showers have tiled ceilings, and often the ceiling gets the same tile as the walls, but this doesn’t have to be the case. Contrasting tile on the ceiling can provide a nice accent feature. If the shower has a curved ceiling, as some steam showers have, relatively small tiles will work better than larger units. Usually smaller tiles are recommended as bigger (cheaper) tiles can make it look pretty awkward and remove the entire enigma of a beautifully designed shower with one improperly placed tile. After spending so much time thinking about your bathroom ideas, you won’t want it to go to ruin because of improperly designed walls. We can offer you advice for choosing the best size depending on your shower and your expected design language. With our experience and knowledge about proportion and assortment of dedicated tilers and designers, you need not worry about any of that.
Overall: All in all, porcelain is a good choice and especially so if your are going for a unibody look as you can use the same type of tile with subtle variations for your complete bathroom. In such a design you can run the wall tile to the ceiling and add a high-end touch to your shower enclosure.
