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Bigger is better, but choose wisely

The availability of extra money fuels aspirations.

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Jagvir Goyal

The availability of extra money fuels aspirations. Better spending power makes people look for newer, exceptional and costlier materials for their houses. Taking a cue from this trend,the  vitrified tile manufacturers are unveiling new sizes of floor tiles in the market virtually every other day. The bigger the size of a tile, the costlier it is. As a huge range of sizes of floor tiles is now available, it is important to make a judicious choice instead of going for bigger sizes blindly. Here are some hints to narrow down your choices:

Available sizes

Floor tiles are now available in sizes as big as 200x100 cm and as small as 30x30 cm. Other sizes available are: 120x180 cm, 80x 160 cm, 120x120 cm, 80x 80 cm, 60x60 cm, 30x180 cm, 20x180 cm and 30x30 cm. Though these are the popular sizes, more sizes with some variations are also available. While 60x60 cm size tiles are packed in lots of four per box, bigger sizes may have just one tile per box. Though metric system is prevalent in India, you get a better idea of tile sizes when these are mentioned in feet and inches. Thus, popular floor tile dimensions can be as large as 6.5 ft and as small as 1 ft.    

Choose the right size

These days ‘the costlier the better’ axiom works with most of the consumers and as a result, bigger tiles are being preferred increasingly by home builders. A cost comparison of different sized tiles will show that most often, the cost of one sq ft of big sized tiles is more than that of smaller ones. However, tile sizes should be decided on the basis of size and use in different rooms in the house.

Drawing room & lobby

A mind boggling range of finishes in tiles is now available in the market, so much so that sometimes it is difficult to differentiate between tiles and marble or granite. Bigger tiles create this illusion effectively. As the drawing room and lobby area mostly measures more than 400 sq ft, big tiles of 6.5x 3.25 ft, 6x4 ft or so, can be selected for this area. Care should be taken to ensure that the width of the tile is not less than half of its length. Depending upon the dimensions of the area, border planks, matching or in contrast, can be used to avoid wastage due to cutting in case the tile width doesn’t fully cover the width of lobby and the drawing room.  

Kitchen

These days kitchen area flooring is mostly an extension of lobby flooring. For a separate kitchen, however, smaller tiles can be used. However, use light-coloured tiles in kitchen flooring to give it a spacious and brighter ambience.

Bedrooms

Unless planned for a palatial bungalow, bedrooms mostly have an area ranging between 180 sq ft to 250 sq ft. Therefore, 80x80 cm size tiles look beautiful in bedrooms. Wooden flooring still remains a favourite choice for home builders. But wooden floors may not be practical in certain areas, so one can opt for tiles with ‘wood look’. A huge range of such tiles, produced to perfection level, is available in the market. It is only when you walk over the floor, will you realise that you are walking over tiles not wood.  

Outdoors

For outdoor areas the durability of tiles is more important as the are heavy traffic areas that are subjected to much more wear and tear than the indoors. Care should, therefore, be taken to use tiles having not less than 16 mm thickness for outdoors. The size, however, can depend on your preference.

Flawless fixing

It should always be kept in mind that bigger the size of a tile, more skill is required in fixing it properly. No doubt, lesser number of joints in flooring is a welcome thing, but big tiles demand a perfectly prepared, compacted and levelled base for resting them over it without creating any air gap between the base and the tile. Thus, the masons need to be highly skilled. Further, the thickness of big-sized tiles should be more in comparison to the normal tile thickness range of 8 mm to 10 mm.

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