Clearance kitchen and laundry tiles
The rooms that take the most abuse: dropped pans, spilled oil, standing water at the sink and a washing machine that vibrates. Durability and cleanability matter more here than anywhere else in the house.
Buying kitchen and laundry tiles: what actually matters
A heavily textured floor tile in a kitchen is a cleaning problem
Texture gives grip, and grip is worth having in front of a sink. But a deep texture in a kitchen collects cooking grease, which then holds dirt, and a mop will not lift it out of the profile. The workable compromise is a lightly textured or matt finish rather than a heavily structured one, which gets most of the slip resistance without becoming a scrubbing job.
Run the floor tile under the kickboards
Running the floor tile under the kickboards, and ideally under where the dishwasher and fridge sit, costs a little more tile and saves an enormous amount of grief later. Appliances get replaced and the new one is never the same height, and a kitchen renovation twenty years from now finds a finished floor rather than a bare patch of screed in the shape of the old cabinets. On clearance stock this changes your quantity, so decide before you order.
How much to over-order, and why 10% is usually the wrong number
Ten per cent is the figure everyone repeats and it is only right for a simple rectangular room laid square with a large format tile. Straight lay in a plain room runs closer to 7 to 10%. A diagonal or herringbone lay wastes far more on the perimeter cuts, so 15 to 20% is realistic. Small formats and mosaics waste more again as a proportion. Rooms with lots of edges, a hob, a niche, a stepped floor, push it up. Because this stock does not come back, round up to the next whole box and then add one more: a spare box costs less than the tile and stops a single cracked tile in year three becoming a whole new floor.
Why this stock is such good value
Clearance tiles are not seconds. Everything here is first grade. It is cheap because it is finite: a line an importer is clearing, a colourway a manufacturer has stopped making, or the tail of a container that nobody wants to keep warehousing. The catch is not quality, it is that you cannot get more. On a normal tile you can go back in six weeks for another two boxes. Here you cannot, so the quantity you order is the quantity you will ever have.