How to Choose The Best Bathroom Tiles: Cost
We're on part four of our 'How to Choose the Best Bathroom Tiles' series! We've talked about colour and size, but of course your perfect bathroom is one you can afford. No bathroom is worth going bankrupt over. So, unless you're bathing-in-$100-bills rich, you're going to consider cost when choosing your bathroom tiles.
Well duh, you're thinking. Of course I'm going to look at the price tag. I know. But if you're choosing between different sized tiles, there are some things you might not have considered.
How much do bathroom tiles actually cost?
When looking at different sized tiles, you need to calculate the total cost, otherwise you're not comparing like-for-like.
Unfortunately you can't just multiply the square footage of the floor and walls, by the tile size and price. You have to account for all those pesky ends which use 1/4 of a tile, weird ledges, corners, space taken up by the medicine cabinet, etc. It gets a little involved.
The easiest thing is to tell your contractor which tiles you like and have them do the math for you. They can also figure out the labour cost involved, which brings us to the next point ...
How much does it cost to LAY your bathroom tiles?
The labour involved in laying and grouting tiles impacts your overall cost, and is impacted by the size of the tiles. (Check out our last post for more on choosing a tile size.)
Smaller tiles = more tiles needed = more time laying and grouting.
There are two things to consider here:
- How much will the size impact the labour time? This will depend on how big the space is, how many ledges and corners have to be cut around, how competent your tiler is, and how much smaller the tiles are compared to your other options.If you're choosing between different sizes of tiles, talk to whoever is doing the work to find out if the extra labour time is significant or not.
- If you fall in love with the idea of smaller tiles, see if you can get them in a mosaic—one large tile made up of smaller tiles. This is the best of both worlds because it's generally faster to lay these tiles, keeping your labour costs down, but they give the impression of small tiles.
Don't forget the extras
If your contractor is figuring out the math for you, they'll take care of this. But if you happen to be working it out yourself, don't forget to account for grout, taxes, and, if applicable, delivery costs (those things are HEAVY. And not heavy in the cool, hip-hop, rude-boy sense. Heavy in the literal sense.).
If you're DIY-ing it, you'll also want to add a few extra tiles to cover you when you accidentally drop one and smash it, or when you make a cut then realize you didn't want to cut there after all. No one does it perfectly first time! ;)
This way, you can have an accurate idea of costs when you choose your new bathroom tile. Next time we'll be talking about the mind game involved in choosing the best bathroom tiles. Stay tuned!
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Check out the other posts in this series:
How to Choose the Best Bathroom Tiles: Colour
How to Choose the Best Bathroom Tiles: Size
[More to come. Stay tuned!]