Ceramic tiles are used for flooring since ancient Egypt, but they remain to this day a fresh and modern interior element. They are beautiful, easy to maintain and long lasting, and their use can be extended to the living room and bedroom too.

A ceramic tile is the standard floor covering. Tiles are easy to clean, durable and look nice. The choice of ceramic tiles is now so wide (various formats, decorative accessories and designs), so a buyer can easily get confused in choosing them.

The basic rule is to put only those tiles that the manufacturer marked as floor tiles on the floor. Otherwise, you can have various side effects - cracked tiles or slippery surfaces on which it is difficult to walk.

The floors covered with tiles are of high quality, easy to maintain, they do not "collect" dust and they make the room cosy. The ceramic tiles lifetime is 10-50 years, and prices range from cheap to very expensive.

In summer, ceramic tiles are ideal, since they "cool" the space and give the area a pleasant feeling. However, this property of ceramics is very undesirable in the winter. So it's good to limit the floor area covered with tiles to hallways, bathrooms, kitchens and utility rooms.

If you are satisfied with the durability and easy maintenance of ceramic tiles, and you want them in the living room too, there is a large selection of tiles that mimic wood or natural stone. These "imitations" are very nice and they give the room a feeling of warmth, like having wooden flooring.

As for the tiles, in winter you can use under-floor heating. Heating pipes are installed in the cement layer under the tiles, which warms the cold tiles over the winter. If you are considering this type of heating system, you should know that there are certain side effects - floor heating warm air raises up, and with it, the germs and dust particles rise up too. This means that the air is less "healthy". In addition, a heated floor is not a good idea for people who have problems with veins.

Ceramic flooring is tough and inflexible and it causes greater fatigue to leg muscles. That’s why such flooring is reserved for areas where we do not spend too much time – kitchen, bathroom, etc.

In order to facilitate the maintenance of ceramic floor tiles it is recommended that joints between the tiles are small, and to use grout mass in gray colour. In this way, less dust will accumulate in the spaces between the tiles, and because of the gray colour of the grout mass the dust that remains will be hard to discern.

Invest in quality ceramic tiles. If you think that buying second or third class tiles is cheaper, think again. Such tiles can be much more difficult to set up (because of small bumps), which means that they will be much more expensive to install. Another reason for buying quality tiles is that even the slightest bump can wear and make damage to your furniture.

GLASS TILES

You can bring in the reflection and sensation in your bathroom with new and unusual glass tiles of various shapes.

New technologies and ideas have brought a lot of opportunities in bathrooms design. Glass tile designs that range from those with pointed ends, or bubble-like constructions, give the bathroom a new and modern dimension. While we previously had only ceramic tiles and irregular forms, now these forms are transformed into glass materials, maintaining its original form.

The first glass tiles appeared in the time of Persia, ancient Greece and India. These glass tiles have retained the motives of that time, and are now manufactured in a mosaic form that gives a space a more intense colour than usual.

MOSAIC TILES

With the help of mosaic tiles your walls and floors could look more like a piece of art than just a pure standard pattern of paving. Mosaic tiles can create beautiful and original designs tailored to the dimensions of space.

Because of their attractiveness, convenience and modern design, mosaic tiles have been popular floor and wall coverings for bathrooms and kitchens for a long period of time. There is a wide range of colours, sizes and shapes and they offer a variety of effects depending on whether they are made of glass, porcelain, ceramics...

In small bathrooms, large tiles visually reduce the space. Consequently a better solution is to choose small tiles. Sometimes it is necessary to tailor the tiles size, since the standard size cannot be installed in irregularly shaped bathrooms, niche or protrusions on the wall. However, it can spoil the total impression and change the rhythm of the tiles line up. Mosaic tiles are very convenient for this type of intervention and can easily fit in any space. They can also be used for tiling some demanding surfaces such as pillars.

Mosaic tiles are ideal for introducing dynamics into a space. This is achieved by combining different colours or different shades of the same tone. Additional dynamics can be achieved by placing tiles at an angle of 45 degrees.

It is not necessary to pave the whole bathroom with the same type of tiles. Using tiles of different sizes but of the same shade can create interesting combinations. Mosaic tile borders can be used for achieving horizontal or vertical accentuation in a bathroom. You can additionally highlight the space and save a few square meters of tiles by estimating where and in what part of the bathroom you can set the tiles at a lower level. You can also tile just the areas around the shower or bathtubs.

Mosaic tiles can emphasize the shower cubicle interior, or the space under the sink, around the toilet tank, or even an entire wall.

A dose of glamour and gloss can be achieved by lining the walls with glass mosaic tiles. The effect of glass mosaic tile is additionally accentuated with various shades of the same colour and the play of light and shadow on each single tile. They can be made of recycled glass, which increases the value to ecology devotees.

Finally, mosaic tiles are ideal for maintenance. Because of small surfaces they can be easily maintained, unlike large areas where the scale is often visible, especially around the shower.