The Ultimate Floor Tile Buying Guide

Floor Tiles

One of the easiest ways to give your home an updated look is by replacing your floor tiles. Choosing the right floor tiles can go a long way in determining your home’s look, style, and feel.

As one of the leading suppliers of floor tiles in Perth, Ross’s Discount Home Centre stocks a large range of quality floor tiles at discount prices. We understand how important your floor tile selection is, as it is the one constant element that connects all rooms of a home.

Think about that for a second—even your wall colour can change from room to room, but a floor tile remains constant from the kitchen to the dining area and living area to the hallway. Therefore, when it comes time to choose a floor tile, you need to know what you’re looking for before you start looking.

With this in mind, here’s a handy guide to buying tiles for floors. Follow this guide, and you’re sure to choose the right floor tiles for your home.

Types of Floor Tiles

Before you jump into purchasing floor tiles, you must first understand the different types of floor tiles. Floor tiles can be made out of various materials, including natural stone, porcelainceramic, concrete, terracotta, terrazzo, glass, and brick.

Let’s look at the top three types of floor tiles in more detail.

Natural Stone Floor Tiles

Natural stone floor tiles offer unique textures, tones, and patterns, and they are more expensive than manmade tiles. Popular choices for natural stone tiles include slate, marble (Carrara, Calacatta, Nero, etc.), quartz, travertine, cobble, sandstone, limestone, and granite.

They may be the most expensive type of floor tile, but their look cannot be beaten or matched by their manmade counterparts. Natural stone tiles provide a sense of opulence that surpasses all other materials. The only real downsides are that they are more prone to scratching and cracking than manmade tiles and require sealing.

Natural stone floor tiles are suitable for indoor and outdoor applications, depending on the finish. Common finishes include natural, polished, tumbled, sandblasted, sawn, and brush hammered. Typically, the smoother the finish, the better suited they are to interior applications. As such, polished natural stone floor tiles are generally preferred for homes, including bathrooms. However, a honed finish is a better option in wet areas due to the slip resistance it offers. Rough natural stone floor tiles are often featured outdoors around pools and patios.

If you’re looking for a cheaper option than natural stone, consider marble-look and stone-look tiles.

Porcelain Floor Tiles

Porcelain floor tiles are one of the most popular floor tiles due to the many benefits they offer. They are extremely hardwearing and durable—much more than ceramic tiles—and provide excellent longevity. They also offer very low maintenance requirements and are allergy-friendly, making them great for kids.

Porcelain tiles are manmade from a mixture of white clay, sand, and feldspar, which is fired to between 1,200 and 1,400 °C to reach vitrification. This process is one of the main differences between porcelain tiles and ceramic tiles. Vitrification makes porcelain tiles fully vitrified, meaning they are highly impermeable to water—they have a water absorption rate of less than 0.5%. Thus, porcelain tiles absorb less water than ceramic tiles, making them a better floor tile option for bathrooms.

The vitrification process also strengthens the tiles, rendering them suitable for heavy traffic floor use. As such, porcelain floor tiles are a better option than ceramic tiles for heavy foot traffic areas such as entrances, hotels, offices, retail outlets, and airports.

Porcelain floor tiles are available in a range of designs and patterns and do a great job mimicking the look of polished natural stones. Popular looks include marble, concrete, terrazzo, and many of the other natural stones mentioned above, all of which you will find in our porcelain tile range. Porcelain tiles like those in our timber-look tile range and concrete-look tile range even mimic the look of timber and concrete quite well. However, while porcelain (and ceramic) floor tiles are an economical alternative to natural stone tiles, they do not replicate the character and warmth of authentic natural stone tiles.

Porcelain floor tiles are available in three finishes: polished, honed, and lappato, making them suitable for internal and external applications. Polished porcelain tiles have a smooth, shiny finish, while honed porcelain tiles are only semi-polished, and lappato porcelain tiles are lightly polished to provide some grip. Their versatility makes them an excellent choice for continuing your indoor floor tile to a patio or deck seamlessly.

Ross’s Discount Home Centre has an extensive range of porcelain floor tiles to choose from, starting at a low price of $35.00 per square metre. Whether you’re after concrete-look tiles, stone-look tiles, or timber-look tiles, polished, honed, or lappato porcelain floor tiles, you’ll find the perfect tile to meet your needs from our large range.

View Porcelain Tiles

Ceramic Floor Tiles

For a great ‘all-rounder’ floor tile, you can’t beat ceramic floor tiles. Ceramic floor tiles are just as popular as porcelain tiles due to their affordability and versatility. They’re water-resistant (although not to the same degree as porcelain tiles), come in literally thousands of styles and designs, are easy to clean and maintain, and won’t harbour allergens over time.

Ceramic tiles are manmade from a mixture of red, brown, or white clay, which is fired to around 900 °C. As they are not fired to the high temperatures of porcelain tiles, they are not as hard or as water-resistant. Still, they are very durable and suitable for wet areas like bathrooms.

Ceramic floor tiles offer the most extensive selection of choices in terms of design and patterns and are more likely to feature tending patterns and intricate designs. Ceramic tiles can also mimic the look of polished natural stones, concrete, terrazzo, and timber, just like porcelain tiles, but at a lower price. There is literally no limit to the patterns and designs possible with ceramic tiles. If it can be printed, it can be printed on a ceramic tile. You only have to look at the range of ceramic tiles we offer here at Ross’s Discount Home Centre to see the versatility in design. They range from stone-look tiles to geometric shapes and gorgeous art nouveau encaustic tile designs.

The versatility of ceramic floor tiles makes them an ideal choice for any setting. However, they are best suited for walls and floors in residential settings with low foot traffic. Their only limitation is that they are only suitable for interior applications; they are not suitable for external applications.

Ross’s Discount Home Centre has an extensive range of ceramic floor tiles, starting at a low price of $10.00 per square metre. Whether you’re after ‘look’ tiles, patterned, or plain floor tiles, you’ll find the perfect tile to meet your needs from our ceramic floor tile range.

View Ceramic Tiles

Tile Hardness

While porcelain tiles are by nature harder than ceramic tiles, another way to determine a floor tile’s hardness is by its PEI rating (Porcelain Enamel Institute rating).

Tiles are rated between 0 and 5, depending on the hardness of their glaze. Most porcelain floor tiles are rated between 3 and 5, while ceramic tiles are rated between 3 and 4.

PEI ClassUsage
0Light-duty walls only. Not suitable for foot traffic. E.g. residential & commercial walls
1Light-duty walls only. Not suitable for foot traffic. E.g., residential & commercial walls
2Light to moderate foot traffic areas. E.g., residential kitchens, hallways, and entrances.
3Moderate to heavy foot traffic areas. E.g., residential & commercial kitchens, foyers, hotels, entrances.
4Light-foot traffic areas, excluding kitchens and entrances. E.g., residential bedrooms and bathrooms.
5Very light-duty foot traffic areas. E.g., residential bathrooms and bedrooms without external access

In addition to hardness, floor tiles are also designed for interior or exterior use. Make sure to consider the application when you are purchasing floor tiles.

Other Buying Considerations

Consider the size of your rooms

Consider the size of your rooms and choose appropriately sized floor tiles. For example, 600x600mm floor tiles suit large rooms perfectly well, but they may overwhelm smaller spaces. For smaller rooms, you should choose floor tiles that are 450x450mm or smaller in size.

Consider the style of your home

To determine the colour, pattern, and style of a floor tile, you should consider the overall design style of your home. Think about whether you want to create a contemporary or traditional space and think of the colour combinations you want to use. When you have a better idea of what you want in terms of your design style, you can start looking for floor tiles that match your style needs.

Read our article, How to Choose the Right Colour Floor Tile, for help deciding the perfect tile colour for your home.

Consider the tile edges

Contemporary tiling features tighter grout lines of 2-3 mm. If this is a look you want to achieve, you need to consider the edges of your tiles. Tight grout lines require tiles with rectified edges as opposed to cushion edges. Rectified edges are cut so that all sides are the same size, making the tile uniform with precision and providing a tight contemporary tile finish. On the other hand, cushion edges (also called pressed-edged or soft-edged) are non-rectified tiles. The edges feature a natural soft inward curve and have not been cut.

Conclusion

Before you jump into purchasing floor tiles, there are several things you must consider. First of all, understand that floor tiles come in different types, including natural stone, porcelain, ceramic, concrete, terracotta, terrazzo, glass, and brick.

Natural stone is an opulent choice but comes at a high cost. Thus, porcelain and ceramic are by far the two most popular options. Porcelain tiles are hard, low maintenance, and very water-resistant floor tiles; however, they are more expensive than ceramic tiles, which are better known for their cost-effectiveness, durability, and versatility.

Floor tiles are graded according to their hardness, and you should always choose a tile based on the application you have in mind. Always choose floor tiles that are appropriately sized for your rooms. And finally, consider the overall style of your home and choose floor tiles accordingly.

For floor tiles in Perth, look no further than Ross’s Discount Home Centre. Whether you’re looking for ceramic tiles, porcelain tiles, outdoor tiles, marble tiles, mosaic tiles, feature tiles, or otherwise, you’ll find just what you’re looking for with us. 

Purchase our floor tiles online and take advantage of our $50 Perth Metro delivery!