One of the main places in your home to find stone and tiles is the kitchen. Whether you’re in the process of picking out kitchen floor tiles or kitchen wall tiles (or both!), there are pitfalls in which you can fall but easily dodge with a little guidance along the way. Enter us, (well, actually our Head of Creative, Grazzie Wilson) and the five most common mistakes made when choosing stone and tiles for the kitchen so you can avoid them like the plague.
Mistake #1 – The Only Place for Wall Tiles is Behind The Stove The first mistake is not the sort that’ll leave you making choices you’ll want to rip up the moment they’re laid, but it’s more of an oversight that too often results in missed tiling opportunities. One of the most popular wall tile areas in a kitchen is behind the stove – a beautifully decorated splash back is just a few tiles away. But that’s not the only expanse of wall on offer. Unlike in a bathroom where tiling every scrap of wall space works, it can look a bit OTT in a kitchen, but there is a middle ground. Picture a patch of metro tiles in say a pleasing sage green (Shoreline in Sea Kale is a lovely example) behind your hob and then imagine carrying a single strip above your work surface upstand. It’s a look we love because it’s subtle and then carries a fine line of colour throughout the room. Or if you prefer create a bespoke tiled area that hides an ugly extractor fan, just like Dan of Dan Lovatt Designs did here with our Bamboo tiles.
Mistake #2 – You Need to Use the Same Floor Tile in Any Adjoining Rooms So you’ve got tiles you’re happy with in your hallway. You’ve got a majestic black and white chequerboard floor tiles that looks the bees knees, but your kitchen flows from your hallway, and now you’re thinking you need to cook in the company of a chequerboard floor too. Right? Wrong. Well, not wrong, if you do choose to continue the same tile as what’s in the adjoining room then it’ll look smart as design continuity always does, but the important thing to note is you don’t have to. Back to that hallway chequerboard example, rather than letting it limit your design options in your kitchen. Instead, be informed by any neighbouring floor tiles in the same way you would with wall colour and choose a tile that’s sympathetic to it and you’ll still create a sense of flow and order. Mistake #3 – Not Linking Tile Palette to Cabinet Colour Sticking to conversations in colour, because tiles are often thought of as a material first and foremost, they aren’t always woven into your kitchen’s colour palette in the way they should be. Similar to worktops, people often simply see them as a stone surface that’ll bed into your kitchen whatever happens. But tiles are one of your kitchen’s greatest areas of colour, texture and even pattern (if you so choose), so to get them looking their best, they should really talk the same language as your cabinet and wall colour. As a working example, see this charcoal grey kitchen by @emmarosestyle. With crisp white walls as a blank canvas, she’s added warmth underfoot with our Marlborough parquet terracotta floor tiles whose tones are repeated in the copper worktop. Deep grey on her cabinets adds depth and then she’s woven in a third hue via her Lyme ceramic green metro tiles in Olive that feel right at home because of her many accents of potted greenery. An example of kitchen floor tiles, wall tiles and paint colour working in perfect harmony. fit.
Mistake #4 – Forgetting to take care of your tiles So, you’re a sucker for stone - maybe a marble mosaic in a beautiful teardrop or love the idea of a crackle glazed tile in a rich green hue for the walls in your kitchen but you forget that some materials need a little TLC. One of the biggest mistakes people make is not taking care of their stone and tiles - whether it’s a gorgeous terracotta, or a crackle glaze tile, you need to remember to seal them and repeat the sealing drill every year, or so.
Mistake #5 – What About Wood? Just as we started, we close on a tile mistake that’s more about overlooking your options. Decorating your kitchen and choosing tiles means you’re likely to be thinking all things stone, ceramic and porcelain. But one of the most-loved floor surfaces in the home is wood, and so don’t let it lose out on all the fun. While there are reams of kitchens with solid hardwood floors underfoot, there are likely just as many with wood-effect flooring because of the risk of wood being damaged should there ever be, dare we say it, a leak or flood. Many kitchen fitters advise against solid wood flooring for that reason, and so if you’re the sort who prefers to err on the side of caution, an extremely versatile wood-effect porcelain floor tile could be the one. A wealth of wooden porcelain floor tiles lie in wait, and their replica planks are full of the grain and tone you’d expect from the likes of oak, ash and walnut. Who knows, maybe you want to go all Danish and take wood up your walls too – anything’s possible…
