At some point, all homeowners face the same question: what should I do with my floors? Do you go with carpet or wood flooring? Vinyl or tile? What type of flooring would benefit you and your home the most?
At Dr. Chem-Dry, we have years of experience cleaning up every kind of flooring surface imaginable. While they all have particular strengths and advantages, we’ve found that tile seems to have a lot going for it. It’s a cheap, attractive and easy to install type of flooring that could make your house look great. Here are seven benefits to having tile flooring in your home.
Related: How to Clean Tile Grout
Durability
Tile is extremely resilient when it comes to staining and wear. Tile is perfect for placement in high traffic areas. It doesn’t have strong impact resistance, though: if you drop a heavy object on tile, it’s as likely to crack as anything else.
Low Maintenance
Because it is so durable, tile doesn’t need much in the way of upkeep. They’ll need to be cleaned, just like any other surface in your home that gets dirty. You’ll want to apply a sealant on your tile about once every 4-5 years. Aside from that, you don’t have much to worry about when it comes to keeping your tiles in good shape.
Cost Effective
Ceramic tiles are very cost effective: they’re one of the cheapest flooring surfaces available. When you factor the initial cost of purchasing the tile and installing them with their longevity and lack of costly maintenance, it becomes clear that tiles are worth every penny. Of course this also depends on the type of tile you use: there are more expensive and high-end tiles on the market.
Water Resistant
Ceramic tiles have a glazed protective layer on their surface that makes them impervious to water damage and stain penetration. This is why tile is so often used to floor bathrooms. They’re also naturally resistant to humidity, making them ideal for flooring an area that is very hot or moist.
Eco-Friendly
Tile is usually made out of raw materials like glass, sand and clay. These materials often get combined with other recycled materials to form ceramic tiles. They also can literally affect your personal environment: they can reduce your heating bills by keeping your house cool in the summer and warm in the winter by serving as a form of insulation.
Resale Value
Installing tile in your home can also prove to be profitable in the long run if you’re going to put your house on the market. There have been many cases where adding a tile floor to a house tremendously increased its resale value. An attractive tile floor could possibly add thousands of dollars to your home’s value.
Air Quality
Tiles are fired in kilns at extremely high temperatures, making it so they contain no volatile organic compounds. This is important as VOCs contribute to a wide range of health problems. Some other forms of flooring (like vinyl and carpet) have low VOC output, but none can stand toe to toe with tiles.
Related: Cleaning Products That Can Damage Your Tile
For more information about our cleaning services, give Dr. Chem-Dry a call at 602-243-6379.
Great list here. Tile flooring can be great for your home, not just because it looks so good! Thanks for sharing these reasons.
I like your tip on how tile floors are low maintenance. I would imagine that being easy to clean is a good way to save you some time in the future when you clean your home. My wife and I are looking for flooring for our home so maybe we should consider tile because it is low maintenance.
I appreciate your tip on how tile floors can be low maintenance. I would imagine that having something that you only need to apply sealant to every 4-5 years would be pretty easy to take care of. My husband and I are remodeling our home so maybe we should consider putting in some tile floors to keep the house low maintenance.
I love tile floors to for all the right reasons, but I love having carpet in the bedrooms. For me it’s nicer to get out of bed in the morning on fluffy carpet. The one thing that tile has done for lots of homes is removed carpet from those high traffic areas like entry’s and hallways. I see some homes with tile in common areas and wood floors in the bedrooms, which looks nice. This is why we clean rugs in our shop through an immersion system, people end up with a rug on the floor in their hard surface bedrooms. Good luck with the remodel.
We are planning on renovating our bathroom and kitchen next year, so I appreciate this information on some of the benefits of tile. I like how you point out that tile flooring is very durable while also being cost effective. I imagine that tile is also pretty easy to clean, so it seems like we could really like it!
Thank you so much for the awesome feedback. We have cleaned carpet, tile, stone and upholstery for years. Not everyone thinks to ask the cleaning experts. The tile & stone doesn’t usually need proffesional cleaning as often as carpeting. I personally like having carpet only in the bedrooms and in the family area, unless you have a nice rug that can go down on a tile or stone floor. Love rugs too.
It’s really cool that tiles can help promote good air quality; that’s something I would have never thought of. However, air quality is definitely something I need to consider since my husband and I both get pretty bad allergies. Maybe we’ll go with tile floors in our kitchen instead of vinyl!
I’ve always liked tile floors, especially in the kitchen. That and the dining area are what get the most spills, so tile makes it easier to clean up.
I didn’t know that ceramic tiles have a glazed protective layer that makes them water and stain resistant. I can see why this would be really good to have in any kitchen or bathroom area. My mom is wanting to remodel her kitchen. I’ll have to talk to her about getting tile because the grandchildren are always spilling things on the floor.
That’ll be nice. I hope the remodel goes well.
In your article, you stated that you’ll want to apply a sealant on your tile about once every 4-5 years and aside from that, you don’t have much to worry about when it comes to keeping your tiles in good shape. My wife has always hated the carpet that we have in our dining room and wants to have it redone. I wonder if there is a certain type of tile that will look amazing in our dining room.
Yes, if the tile is porcelain or ceramic then the grout needs to be sealed. This helps the cleaning in the future and prevents permanent stains. If you go with a natural stone, then the stone and grout need to be sealed. Good luck and I want to do the same to my front living, because it’s by the front door and always gets dirty.
I have been kind of partial towards ceramic tiles in the past due to how cost effective they are, but I had no idea that they were so low maintenance. Their water resistance and durability are also a pretty good selling point to me. It sounds like ceramic tiling should be my choice of flooring in the future!
Ceramic tiles and also porcelain (there are more options with porcelain and it is very durable). We also recommend sealing them. This way there is no need in the future to restore or recolor the grout which can get pricy.
My wife and I are in the process of tiling our bathroom and so I really like what was said about this article. Every house that I have lived in that has tile has been super low maintenance. The part of this article I like the most is how tile is water resistant. This is good because if you have hardwood floors, the hardwood floors get ruined if they get wet.
Nailed it. I have seen some new tiles out in homes that give the look of wood, but they are a porcelain, very cleanable tile with smaller grout lines.
My wife and I have been wanting to update our flooring for a long time. Our carpet is getting old and dirty. I didn’t realize that tiles don’t give off any volatile organic compounds because of the immense heat they undergo in the kiln. The fact that they are safer in that way makes them a good option for us.
I have some areas I’d like to update as far as flooring goes in my home too. If you need a good deep cleaning of the carpeted areas to give you more time to save up for the right tile floors, let us know or find a local Chem-Dry in your area at chemdry.com.
I agree that installing tile flooring can increase the value of your home. Tile flooring can brighten your home if you use a light color and can make your home more attractive. It could be a good idea to consider tile flooring now instead of waiting for a time to increase the value of your home before sale so that you can reap the benefits.
That is so true. I’m saving money to replace some of the floors that I don’t like in my home and I’ll be going with a nice porcelain tile floor. It’ll be installed everywhere, but the bedrooms. I like having carpet in the bedrooms.
Tile does seem like a great option. We plan on having a ton of people in our kitchen pretty often, so tile would be good for that area. If it is durable and low maintenance, we may just put it everywhere!
I do love tile floors, but I also love having carpet in the bedrooms. Rugs are another option, but sometimes more expensive to maintain in bedrooms.
That’s a great point you make about how tile is extremely resilient when it comes to staining and water. I’ve actually heard, too, that having tile in your home can increase its overall value by up to 5% because of the durability. I’ll have to remember this great information as I consider getting tile in my house.
I’ll bet that your 5% is accurate. Thank you for that observation.
It’s true that tile is very durable and easy to clean for the most part, like you said. However, over time, it can get a bit dirty, especially the grout. It may be wise to hire professional services to help clean the tile in a way that makes it just as good as new.
Very wise. I believe that it saves people money, because the tile floors don’t need a professional cleaning as often. When there is only carpet in the bedrooms, the carpet doesn’t need cleaned as often. I would never do tile or hard wood in the bedrooms, because I like waking up and stepping on carpet.
I like how you said that tile is low maintenance and only really needs to be cleaned on the surface. We’re thinking about remodeling our kitchen but we would have to hire a floor removal agency to come in so we could get rid of our old flooring. It would be a good way to help teach our kids how to mop and sweep and take better care of a floor because right now they aren’t so good at it.