Planning your renovation project can be daunting when you have to tally up what materials you will need. Get this wrong and you risk running out of tiles before the job is complete. Unfortunately, this happens all too often, but if you are prepared you won’t fall into this trap. Costs can quickly blow out when you need to rearrange your tradies and pay extra delivery fees. On the other hand, ordering too many can be a real hassle if you intend on returning them. Not only are boxes of tiles incredibly heavy, your tile retailer may have a no returns policy.
Tiles are measured in square meters and a box is generally one square meter. But this isn’t always the case. Be sure you ask your tile retailer who will help to calculate how many boxes you will need. You need to provide them with an overall amount in square meters, so best jot this down before heading into the store. But let’s take a step back. First off, you need to…
Measure the space
This means digging out the tape measure and sizing each surface you intend on tiling. To calculate the square meters you need to multiply the length by the width. In a space like a bathroom, you will have multiple surfaces to measure which will need to be added up for an overall figure.
It’s easy to forget the small bits. Like the top of a bath panel or tiles used for skirting boards. In these situations you may add an extra few meters as an estimate. Be sure to double-check your calculations or even use a pencil to mark the surfaces you have already counted.
Do you have an oddly shaped room? Check out this post by Fowles which talks about how to calculate different shapes. While it talks about carpet installation, the principals remain the same.
Then account for wastage
Wastage is the term used for offcut tiles that cannot be used in other areas. Your tiler should use offcuts where he can, but there will always be some wastage after the job is finished. How much to expect depends on a number of factors.
The size of the areas to be tiled
One big open floor will have less wastage than several smaller rooms with the same overall size. Obstacles like walls and hallways create more cut tiles and extra wastage. The same can be said for bathrooms. In a bathroom where large walls are tiled from floor to ceiling you will have less wastage than one with many adjoining surfaces.
The size of the tiles themselves
The larger the tile, the more wastage you will have. This comes down to bigger offcuts. And with tiles ranging from 100cm to more than 1000cm, the degree of wastage is dramatic.
A rule of thumb in the industry used to be to plan for 5% wastage. With modern tiles only becoming larger, this is now closer to 5-20% based on the factors we have explained.
And let’s not forget some spares
Often in a new build home, there is a box of tiles sitting in the garage that will gather dust for the next twenty years. Sometimes we may declutter and decide to take them to the tip. But if you find yourself in a situation down the track with some cracked or broken tiles, you will wish you had hung onto them.
Matching tiles is a specialist service and it is unlikely you will be able to source an exact match. Even if it looks ‘close enough’ it may stick out like a sore thumb. And having everything replaced for the sake of one tile would be an expensive repair. The amount of spares you choose to keep is up to you, but a box is a modest amount to keep in reserve.
What about buying an extra box if you need it after the project is finished? A word of caution. Tiles are produced in batches which means there can be variation in the pigment and shade of the tiles. Perhaps not so different to the eye, but when you sit the tiles against each other you are sure to notice.
So, to give an example
We have two floors that need to be tiled. Our heart is set on a 400×400 tile.
Room 1 is 4.2m long by 3.6m wide. Multiplying this gives me 15.12sqm
Room 2 is 3.6m long by 3.6m wide. Multiplying this gives me 12.96sqm
We have an overall figure of 28.08sqm.
We have a medium-sized tile and have two rooms which account for a moderate amount of wastage. In this instance, you would plan for 10% wastage and perhaps an extra metre as spares.
You can do the math yourself to come up with the figure, but it’s a better idea to write down 10% + 1sqm in your notebook. When you get to your tile retailer they will want to account for wastage and you could easily get yourself into a jam. If an extra 10% is added to your final figure you may end up with more than a few spares lurking in your garage!
Now that you know how to size up your next project, check out this page where we share our favourite tile retailers.