The Beauty of Wood-Effect Tiles

Wooden flooring is a classic homeowner choice offering a trendy, affordable and durable solution to enhance your flooring. Aside from laminate and vinyl, already popular choices for wood-effect flooring, wood-effect tiles are now emerging and becoming rapidly popular in the market. But why?

We’ll take you through the ups and downs to wood-effect tiles compared to the alternatives, alongside our very own style guide for how to bring out the beauty of wood-effect tiles in different rooms of the home.

Benefits of Wood Effect Tiles Vs. Wooden Flooring

Why not opt for wood flooring? It’s true that wood flooring can captivate your walkways but there are also drawbacks that people don’t always consider:

• Expensive: Wooden flooring is considerably more expensive compared to wood-effect tiles. You can achieve similar levels of durability and life span with a tile alike to that of a wooden floor.
• Discolour over time: Hardwood flooring is prone to discolour over time when left in areas of direct sunlight. The wooden slabs nearer the window space can be slightly lighter to those in the middle of the room and hence can create an uneven and extremely noticeable difference in your home.
• Susceptible to scratches: Materials like grit and sand from shoes or even dropping a small item like a TV remote can easily create dents and scratches.

Good To Know: If there is any damage done to your wood-effect tile, you can easily replace a single tile, usually with a better match than that of wooden planks.

Sadly, as real wood discolours over time, getting the same shade of wood can be difficult hence if the wooden flooring is damaged, it often requires the entire floor to be replaced.

Why Wood-Effect Tiles?

Let’s start with the many pros of getting wood-effect tiles compared to laminate, vinyl or wooden flooring. Though there are plenty of reasons why you should gravitate towards them, below are the top three points:

#1 Ease of Installation

Once you’ve decided on the type and colour of wooden floor you require, it’s important for a homeowner to get this installed not only quickly but to a professional standard. Thankfully, with wood-effect tiles, you’re able to do just that.

Wood flooring requires many materials and tools to firstly remove skirting which could also be damaged in the removal process if not dealt with care. It then requires measuring, cutting and adjusting your wood to ensure they fit your floor dimensions. As it sounds, there is a lot of fiddly work involved.

Oppositely, although wood-effect tiles use grout and adhesive, they are a lot simpler to lay. Tiles can be cut to fit the room without needing to remove the skirting and can be fitted the same day of purchases as, unlike most wooden flooring, they do not have to be left in the room for 48 hours beforehand to acclimatise to the temperature and moisture content of the room.

#2 Low Maintenance

Looking after your wood-effect tiles is super easy and requires infrequent cleaning, unlike wooden flooring which demands more attention. Particularly if you select a glazed tile, you’ll be able to use the same cleaning products for your glazed bathroom wall tiles and similar.

We recommend using LTP Floorshine or LTP Waxwash to keep your tiles clean and in their best condition without using harsh chemicals or additives that can damage or weaken your tiles.

#3 Long Lifespan

Wood-effect tiles are made from either ceramic or porcelain and so they don’t get as easily damaged as real wood. Their properties are a lot stronger even when compared to hardwoods. Therefore, as a customer, you receive a product that is equally as beautiful without the complications of warping from moisture damage, discolouration, scratch and dent damage and more.

Our wood-effect tiles have a longer lifespan assuming you maintain them carefully. Although they require little maintenance, we recommend cleaning them every month, when spillages occur and then completing a deep clean every few months depending on how much traffic they receive.

The Drawbacks

Sadly, there are some elements of using these tiles that are considered to be a drawback for some. These include the following:

• Less sound absorbent meaning unless they’re underlaid with thick, insulating material, noise is inevitable.
• Wood-effect tiles require grout which can be a problem for those who aren’t confident about installing tiles. This can easily be avoided by hiring a professional, and your local Tile Giant store can recommend tilers to provide a smooth and clean installation.
• Tiled flooring is sometimes described to be less comfortable on bare feet due to its tendency to be cooler than hardwood flooring. This can be counteracted by the luxury of underfloor heating or the use of slippers or alternative indoor footwear.

How To Style Wood-Effect Tiles

Once you’ve chosen your flooring, it’s onto choosing the wallpaper, paint colours, furniture and room accessories - probably every homeowner favourite part.

With so many wood-effect tiles to choose from, you’re given creative freedom to mix and match different shades and styles to really personalise your home and make it bespoke to you.

To get some ideas of how to really make the most of your wood-effect tiles in the living room, kitchen and bathroom, scroll through our styling tips below.

Living Room

Sticking with the subtle woodland shades found in our Sequoia Grey Wood Effect tile, we’ve styled this lounge in beautifully vibrant orange furnishings. These soft orange shades are perfect for complementing this alluring grey glazed porcelain tile.

To contrast the glossy finish of this tile we recommend you incorporate an array of textures to the room including chunky knit, ruffles, stripes and similar.

Kitchen & Dining Room

Just like your cooking, we believe your kitchen and dining areas should be colourful and consist of many different shapes and textures.

So, in order to create a bold yet sophisticated kitchen, we’ve combined the glossy whites and blacks, with sunshine yellows and the subtle Sequoia Grey Wood Effect tile. This combination boasts elegance whilst still looking very modern.

The use of neutral block colours in the cupboards and kitchen island are cleverly juxtaposed with a burst of colour to brighten the room without being too overpowering. The addition of yellow kitchen accessories then matches the natural, unbleached wood effect tiles to bring the room to life.

We also suggest adding geometric and spotty mugs, tea towels and other kitchen accessories to diversify the natural striped lining in the floor tiles.

Bathroom

With the bathroom, we always aim to make this living space warm, cosy and inviting. More often than not, we find people unintentionally decorate their bathrooms so that they look cold and dreary.

To avoid this, we highly recommend opting for natural shades and making the room come to life with living elements like plants. Taking the green tones found in plants, you can mix and match between emerald greens to pastels, olive shades to cater for the various leaf tones.

These perfectly match the creamy, pastel yellow tones in the tiles used: Rowan Oak Wood Effect Tiles.

Why Tile Giant?

We offer extremely competitive pricing on our entire range of tiles and likewise, these wood-effect floor tiles are both competitive for retail and trade. Our stock is widely available in our 100+ showrooms which are open to browse at your leisure.

Our growing collection of wood-effect tiles includes the ever popular Rowan, Nordik and Eterna to name just a few, and we’ll be featuring new releases over the coming weeks as add even more collections to our catalogue.

Alternatively, if you’d prefer to shop tiles online, we can supply you with samples delivered for free.

Not only that but Tile Giant also offer a buyback service on any unused tiles, meaning you get value for money.

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Need more help? Call our team of experts on 0345 307 5000