Kitchen Tiles
Tiles for your kitchen wall, floor and backsplash
An overview of how to use ceramic, glass and stone tiles in the kitchen: on the walls, on the floor, and especially on the backsplash.
Kitchen Wall Tiles
Tile can be a great wall surface in the kitchen – or an ongoing annoyance, depending on the choices made in planning and installing.
Two important questions to ask in the planning stage are:
- where do I want to install tile on my kitchen walls
- and why?
The most common place to install wall tile in the kitchen is on the backsplash, especially behind the sink and the cooktop. The reasons are to protect the wall from water, food splashes and grease, and to make the wall easier to clean. Some kitchens use tile on the walls more extensively, perhaps as a wainscot (floor to chair-rail level) or even all the way up the wall.
Almost any tile will do a decent job of protecting the wall if it’s installed correctly. A kitchen wall is not like a bathroom shower surround where water is being sprayed on it continuously and frequently. The easy cleaning rationale is another story, though.
What makes tile easy to clean? Mainly, it’s the smooth, non-porous surface which water, grease and food splashes can’t soak in to, stick to or stain. To get the full benefit of easy cleaning it’s important to use tile which really is smooth and non-porous. Unfortunately fashions in tile often lead us astray from this ideal:
- tiny mosaic tile with miles of grout lines to catch dirt and need resealing regularly.
- textured tile with raised designs to catch dirt and take longer to clean.
- tumbled stone tile with rough surfaces and edges, and wide grout lines, to – you guessed it – catch dirt and be almost impossible to clean.
It’s your call whether in your own kitchen you want to trade less ease in cleaning for more beauty or fashion – but it’s important to make an informed choice. Try to talk to someone who has the tile you plan to install, in a similar location to where you plan to install it, who cooks about the same amount as you do, and ask them how easy they find it to live with before you invest the time and money.
This is critically important if you plan to install a tiled feature wall behind the cooktop as, especially with gas burners, food and grease will get deposited there no matter how careful you are and it will need to be cleaned regularly.
A tile wainscot has rather different wear and cleaning requirements from a backsplash. You are less likely to run into problems with grease and food splatters, but much more likely to have to deal with dings and bangs. For this reason, tile here needs to be stronger and to be really solidly installed. Where on a backsplash you can get away with installing tile directly on drywall, if your tile wainscot is going to be banged by chairs or flying toddlers on tricycles, you’ll need a stronger, more rigid backing such as cement backerboard or plywood. Even 2 layers of regular drywall will give a stronger, more solid backing.
Kitchen Floor Tiles
A tiled kitchen floor is a thing of beauty or a pain in the feet, depending on your point of view.
First of all, there are certain requirements which need to be met in order to successfully tile a floor.
1. The floor structure itself must be suitable. That means strong, level, dry, and non-flexing. If it bounces when you walk on it, your tile will crack. If it’s damp, the tile will lift up or not stick at all. Make sure those items are checked off before you even think about installing tile.
2. The tile you choose must be suitable for floors. Much tile available is manufactured for use on walls and is not strong or wear-resistant enough for floor use.
Given those two factors, tile floors have their pros and cons:
- Water-resistant (if installed properly)
- Easy to clean (except that the grout lines catch dirt)
- Cool to the touch (great if you’re in a warm climate)
- Excellent for in-floor radiant heating systems (great if you’re in a cold climate!)
- Hard: dropped dishes will break, feet and legs may get sore
Tile is one of the most flexible materials you can use from a design point of view. You can do anything from a field of plain squares to a multi-colored, multi-shaped, multi-bordered extravaganza. Design choices can make an area seem larger or smaller, direct the eye to a focal point, mark off areas for different uses, soothe you or wake you up.
Kitchen Backsplashes – Tile Ideas
A kitchen tile backsplash has been a classic from Victorian days. I’ve talked about practicality in the section above on kitchen wall tile, so let’s just say here that the smoother your tile and the fewer grout lines you have, the easier it will be to clean.
Here’s a backsplash using mixed sizes of glass tile in a range of hues in a similar color range. Although there’s a fair amount of white grout here, the random pattern means that dirt won’t jump out at you as much as it would with a more regular pattern. One thing to be careful of with a ‘random” design is that you make it random enough: on the right in this picture, just above the back corner of the cooktop, too many of the grout lines line up vertically and it introduces a design line which shouldn’t be there.
This is more glass tile, this time a regular checkerboard on the lower half and stripes on the upper half of the backsplash. This is a bit “busy” for my personal taste but it’s certainly decorative. It could be toned down by using fewer colors, or jazzed up by using more.
Tile from the 1970’s showing just how well it can wear. This installation has probably been re-grouted at some point, and the tile design is dated, but it’s still in fine shape and if you enjoy the color it would still be worth keeping.
Another older installation showing some discoloration in the grout – but it hardly shows against the pattern and color of the tiles.
An all-white mosaic tile backsplash. If I was going to maintain a mosaic, myself I would want one with more color and pattern to make it worthwhile. If it’s going to be plain white, I’d go for bigger tiles.
This all-white installation uses larger tiles with a subtle textured pattern which would be easy to clean as well as decorative.
The best book ever on laying tile
“Setting Tile” by Michael Byrne
Of the many I have read in the process of researching my own tile projects, this is THE best book on actually laying tile.
There are no pretty pictures to give you ideas, but there is page after page of detailed, specific information on exactly how to go about a tiling project, whether wall or floor, wet or dry, heavy or light use – it’s all here from the all-important substrate the tile is attached to, to the final grout and sealer.
If you plan to do your own tiling, it’s a must-have: if you don’t, then you need this book so you know whether your tile guy is doing a high quality job or one that will fail long before it should.
More information on kitchen floor plans.
