Browse Forums Bathrooms and Laundry 1 Jun 29, 2014 5:30 pm I'm doing a bathroom renovation and know very little about tiles. Of the floor tile I like (from Beaumonts) one version is a matt slightly textured tile (300x600) that has no slip rating and another with the same design but with rougher texture and R11 slip rating. However I am advised the R11 tile will require more frequent cleaning (ugh!). My questions are: For a domestic bathroom setting with tiled shower is there a legal or recommended requirement re slip resistance. Should I use the R11 in the shower (and put up with the cleaning) and the non-rated outside. Or is this all a storm in a teacup! Many thanks! Re: Slip resistance and bathroom tiles 2Jul 02, 2014 2:58 pm A bit of a late reply. I would say a BIG no to a matt finish tile as this tile creates as you may know a maintenance nightmare. R11 are to be used outdoors only so no on that too and again maintenance nightmares believe me. There are no legal requirements for home owners but there is for commercial use. You should not have to worry about glazed tiles or polish porcelains getting slippery. I have hundreds of customers who have never complained about slipping on these types of tiles. The only complaints we get is the quality of Beumonts tiles see other threads about this. Re: Slip resistance and bathroom tiles 3Jul 02, 2014 4:38 pm When you say "maintenance nightmare", what do you mean exactly? Re: Slip resistance and bathroom tiles 4Jul 03, 2014 9:12 am Dirt will stick to matt finish tiles and R11 tiles. You will have no way of cleaning them specially if the water gets dirty while cleaning. After a couple of years you will be forced to have a professional come out and clean them for you. I have trained hundreds of tile cleaners and most of the tile cleaning jobs they get are matt finish tiles or rough surface tiles. The rest of the calls would be for the grout as the tiles glazed or double glazed still look perfect. Re: Slip resistance and bathroom tiles 5Jul 03, 2014 9:17 am Grout Perfect Dirt will stick to matt finish tiles and R11 tiles. You will have no way of cleaning them specially if the water gets dirty while cleaning. After a couple of years you will be forced to have a professional come out and clean them for you. I have trained hundreds of tile cleaners and most of the tile cleaning jobs they get are matt finish tiles or rough surface tiles. The rest of the calls would be for the grout as the tiles glazed or double glazed still look perfect. What are your thoughts on lappato finish polished porcelain tiles? We have these as our floor tiles and now I'm wondering if they will be difficult to clean Custom downslope build Build thread viewtopic.php?f=31&t=61873 Blog http://www.buildingroyalmanor.blogspot.com.au Re: Slip resistance and bathroom tiles 6Jul 03, 2014 10:36 am Lappato has a semi polished finish which is also known as Lappato finish. I have not had much experience with this type of tile sorry so I am unsure but any type of gloss is a good thing. My guess is the darker coloured tiles may show up more marks than a light coloured semi glazed tile. Re: Slip resistance and bathroom tiles 7Jul 03, 2014 9:08 pm It just means you have to clean it. In general the glossier a tile is, the easier it is to clean which will be great as you are ly ing on it inspecting it for dirt whilst you are waiting for the ambulance to turn up and cart you off to hospital when you have slipped over Re: Slip resistance and bathroom tiles 8Jul 03, 2014 10:42 pm I used Lappato porcelain tiles in our build two years ago. I have just had them laid in our reno. I love them. They are non slip and easy to clean. Re: Slip resistance and bathroom tiles 9Jul 04, 2014 9:04 am I have to agree RHM. There is no way I'd use a full gloss tile on either a wet room floor nor an entrance foyer where there is a possibility of wet floors. I've seen a few people take a tumble on display home floors while we were having a looksee on a rainy day. Stewie Re: Slip resistance and bathroom tiles 10Jul 04, 2014 10:40 am Gertrudemyra I used Lappato porcelain tiles in our build two years ago. I have just had them laid in our reno. I love them. They are non slip and easy to clean. Thanks for that Gertrudemya easy to clean and not slippery. Sounds good to me. Will be passing this info on. Re: Slip resistance and bathroom tiles 11Jul 05, 2014 9:24 pm I had this same issue with choosing tiles about a month or two ago. I initially selected a polished porcelain (unglazed) tile, but then once I did a bit more research decided this was a bad idea. I didn't want matte/honed tiles because of the maintenance issues so ended up with a porcelain lappato tile which I absolutely LOVE. It is glazed, so should theoretically be much easier to clean, and is low-slip. Re: Slip resistance and bathroom tiles 13Jul 08, 2014 8:18 pm Gertrudemyra I used Lappato porcelain tiles in our build two years ago. I have just had them laid in our reno. I love them. They are non slip and easy to clean. Thanks, that makes me feel better I love the look of lappato finish tiles - I think they look quite classy. At the moment though mine are so dirty so I can't really see that lappato shine I can't wait until they're cleaned. Custom downslope build Build thread viewtopic.php?f=31&t=61873 Blog http://www.buildingroyalmanor.blogspot.com.au Re: Slip resistance and bathroom tiles 14Jul 08, 2014 8:55 pm We have matte finish in our shower and bathroom at the moment and they are fine and not a nightmare to keep clean at all even after bathing the dog in there. I wouldn't go gloss in any wet area for the floor. Sent from my iPhone using ones and zeros and 4G Re: Slip resistance and bathroom tiles 15Jul 08, 2014 9:04 pm I'm getting Lappato and would never put polished porcelain. Just feel the tiles on a swimming pool. They are slippery as hell. And if you keep your bathroom regularly cleaned I can't see there being many issues. If your lazy... Well then no tile will be ok. Soap scum sticks to everything even your shower screen. Re: Slip resistance and bathroom tiles 16Jul 09, 2014 3:56 pm With no disrespect, unless you are an older person who needs to be careful, you really don't need a slip rated tile. This rating is more important for commercial projects. As a woman I tell all my clients to feel the tiles to make sure you can clean them and that it is not a dirt catcher. You will hate cleaning a rough tile believe me!. Feel for some resistance which will assist you in deciding how slippery it really is. If you choose a really glossy tile of course this will be slippery but only in wet. The most slippery area is usually the actual Shower recess floor and a way around this is to either use a complimenting feature mosaic that you may also be using on a feature wall in the same room OR user a small tile where your foot goes over the grout joins which helps also. Hope this was useful Regards Joanne Re: Slip resistance and bathroom tiles 17Jul 10, 2014 10:05 am Hi there Yes you can go for a tile with a slip rating to ensure a greater lever of grip but the trade of is the cleaning - or more the ease of cleaning. We always recommend to our clients glazed tiles, not matt vitrified tiles. When i say glaze this does not mean shinny, glazes can also be in a satin finish. They are much easier to clean and secondly and so so importantly can hide a lot more as with glazed tiles we can introduce movement /pattern in the tile. Yes it is important to go for a tile that's easy to clean but just as important go for a tile that you don't have to clean so often.....It doesn't matter if it is a dark or light coloured tile, if it is a plain solid colour it shows everything. Take a good quality glazed porcelain that lets say looks like a travertine/stone. With digital printing the tile has amazing detail and various from tile to tile like the real stone. Unlike the real stone it needs no sealing and maintenance but the big benefit is the movements hides so so much. Yes you need to clean tiles of course, but you don't need to be a slave to the ones that show every little thing. You also have to balance up the look you want to achieve. If you want some thing plain and solid well the trade off is how often you need to clean it. A note on the lapato tiles ...very nice material use it regularly in projects for bathrooms. Cheers Re: Slip resistance and bathroom tiles 18Oct 24, 2014 8:37 am There is an indoor tile that I like, that is whitish and R10. It has some texture that you can feel when you run your hand across it (but small texture, not like an external tile). From this discussion some people argue against higher slip resistance on the grounds of more difficult to clean. How much extra difficult to clean? We don't use old fashioned soap, instead we use shower gel (lotion), and also shampoo. Does that reduce the cleaning problem? Also, we use a cleaning service (as our choice is we'd rather pay for cleaning) so the cleaner, presumably more experienced at cleaning showers, would do the work. My view is that if the shower floor tile doesn't provide grip that gives me confidence that I won't slip even when it is wet, there is shower gel on it, and even if my eyes are closed while shampooing--then I would put a shower mat designed for grip on the shower floor. Under these circumstances, would you recommend against this bathroom tile because it is R10 rated (and would therefore be difficult to clean)? Would someone (even me) be foolish to install R10 bathroom tiles because I will be frustrated later with cleaning difficulties? For our other bathroom, we are looking a lappato finish tile, for which the retailer has no slip resistance rating. In general, I would like all tile intended to be used on shower floors to be slip resistance rated. Why not? Give the consumer the accurate information, rather than we all just speculate. Also, why not a "cleaning difficulty" measure, which, though imperfect, at least gives us an objective comparison. A related issue is our bathroom designer loves a tile that has slate stone look. He says it would give you "more of a hug" when you enter the bathroom, as opposed to the plainer white. I've also heard that neutral, quiet is better for permanent features such as flooring, as we're stuck with that for years, and you can always add pizzazz with changeable stuff like brightly colored towels (just an example!). This argument is that people tire of loud permanent looks, such as loud flooring that can't be changed, so any loud bits should be changeable. While the slate tile seems loud to me, he says it's not really loud but would still be considered neutral. Re: Slip resistance and bathroom tiles 19Oct 25, 2014 10:56 am Okay, I have a sample of an R10 (slip resistance rating) tile, which is textured and relatively high slip resistance. Let's get some science into this! I guess the best way to test it is to just pour some shampoo on it, let the shampoo dry, and try to clean the tile with a wet rag. Then same for shower gel. (Can you think of a better test?) Re: Slip resistance and bathroom tiles 20Oct 27, 2014 10:11 am Glazed R10 tiles should be fine but matt finish may cause some cleaning issues. The most problems we see is people cleaning there tiles with dirty water as all they are doing is spreading the dirt around. In a shower cubicle we see them holding up a lot better but outside the shower is where the problem ******. My suggestion clean with clean water and dry asap this will take away the dirt. If you want to test a sample tile just drop some red cordial on the surface and see if it stains. I recently went through a similar renovation and move scenario when updating our family home. We also swapped some rooms around and tackled a major… 2 10032 Firstly the ableflex that has been installed needs (manufactures specification) a sealant cap over the top, preventing water draining down between the slab and the… 3 7780 Render your bathroom walls, two opinions versus the one, makes you wonder. 3 6062 |