How to Install Floor Tiles
Floor tiles are hard-wearing and, with a little patience, well within reach of a careful do-it-yourselfer. This guide walks through it step by step – and shows you how to work out the exact number of tiles before you buy.
Work out your material first →
Tiles are sold by the box, and a centered layout cut on every side wastes more than a rough area estimate suggests, so the first thing to get right is how many to order. Draw your room in the free planner and it counts the tiles and the edge cuts for your actual floor – then follow the six steps below to install them.
Tiling a floor in 6 steps
Measure the floor and buy the right number of tiles
Measure the room, or draw it in the free planner, and let it count the tiles for your layout instead of area × 10 %. A centered floor is cut on every side, so order the count it gives you plus a spare box – for breakages now and for repairs years later, when the same batch may be gone.
Prepare and prime the subfloor
The subfloor must be clean, flat, sound and load-bearing – brush off the dust and check it carries weight without flexing. Prime it so the adhesive bonds, and if it dips more than about 1/8 in, pour a self-leveling underlayment and let it cure. Tiles laid on a hollow or dusty base come loose again.
Set out from the center of the room
Find the room's center lines, dry-lay a row of tiles out towards the walls, then snap chalk lines to fix the grid. Shift it until the edge cuts come out even on opposite sides and no thin sliver lands at the main wall or in the doorway, where it would show most.
Mix and comb the adhesive
Mix the adhesive to a firm, lump-free paste and spread only as much as you can tile before it skins over – a few dozen square feet at a time. Comb it out with a notched trowel held at a steady angle; for large-format tiles, back-butter the tile as well so the bed underneath is full.
Lay the tiles with spacers
Bed each tile with a slight twist, push it up to the spacers and check the level and lippage against its neighbors as you go – it is far easier to correct now than once the adhesive sets. Cut the edge tiles and the cut-outs for pipes to size, keeping the offcuts for the opposite side.
Let the adhesive cure, then grout
Leave the adhesive to cure fully before you walk on the tiles or grout – check the bag for the time. Then remove the spacers and grout the joints (a separate step, covered in its own guide), and finish the edges and movement joints with a flexible sealant.
Know the tile count before you shop
Instead of area × a rule-of-thumb 10 %, the free planner places every tile at its real size, counts the edge cut pieces and rounds up to whole boxes – the exact shopping list for your room.
Open the free planner →Frequently asked questions
- How much waste should I allow for floor tiles?
- For a straight, centered lay in a simple rectangular room, 8–10 % extra is a common rule of thumb; diagonal patterns, large formats and rooms with lots of corners need more. Rather than guess, let the planner count the real edge cuts for your floor and round up to whole boxes, then add one spare box for breakages and later repairs.
- Should I start tiling from the center or from a wall?
- For most rooms, set out from the center so the cut edge tiles are balanced and no awkward sliver lands at a prominent wall. Starting along a single straight, visible wall can work in a small or narrow room, but a centered layout almost always looks more even – try both in the planner first.
- How much tile adhesive do I need per square foot?
- It depends on the notched trowel and the tile size – roughly 0.6–1 lb per square foot for standard tiles with a medium notch, and more for large formats that are back-buttered. You don't have to do the sum yourself: the free planner lists the bags of adhesive for your layout alongside the tiles, and the tile adhesive calculator fine-tunes the quantity for your trowel size.