One of the main places in your home to find stone and tiles is the kitchen. Whether you’re in the process of picking out kitchen floor tiles or kitchen wall tiles (or both!), there are pitfalls in which you can fall but easily dodge with a little guidance along the way. Avoid making mistakes choosing tiles to guarantee a cohesive design.

Enter us, and the most common mistakes made when choosing stone and tiles for the kitchen so you can avoid them like the plague.

Patterned Floor Tiles

The first mistake is not the sort that’ll leave you making choices you’ll want to rip up the moment they’re laid, but it’s more of an oversight that too often results in missed tiling opportunities. When choosing tiles, avoid common mistakes to guarantee the best outcome.

One of the most popular wall tile areas in a kitchen is behind the stove – a beautifully decorated splash back is just a few tiles away. But that’s not the only expanse of wall on offer. Unlike in a bathroom where tiling every scrap of wall space works, it can look a bit OTT in a kitchen, but there is a middle ground. Avoid the mistakes of over-tiling when choosing your materials.

Picture a patch of metro tiles in say a pleasing sage green (Shoreline in Sea Kale is a lovely example) behind your hob and then imagine carrying a single strip above your work surface upstand. It’s a look we love because it’s subtle and then carries a fine line of colour throughout the room. Or if you prefer, add a few more rows of tone by tiling up to the height of your kitchen sink’s tap, like we did with the ceramic Shoreline tiles in Gull in this calming kitchen, or create a bespoke tiled area that hides an ugly extractor fan, just like Dan of Dan Lovatt Designs did here with our Bamboo tiles. Remember, avoiding mistakes in choosing tiles can enhance subtle design touches.

So you’ve got tiles you’re happy with in your hallway. You’ve got a majestic black and white chequerboard floor (courtesy perhaps of our Bermago and Zuber limestone tiles that looks the bees knees), but your kitchen flows from your hallway, and now you’re thinking you need to cook in the company of a chequerboard floor too. Right? Avoiding design mistakes when choosing tiles ensures visual harmony.

Wrong. Well, not wrong, if you do choose to continue the same tile as what’s in the adjoining room then it’ll look smart as design continuity always does, but the important thing to note is you don’t have to. Consider mistakes made when choosing tiles to make sure your design is flexible.

Back to that hallway chequerboard example, rather than letting it limit your design options in your kitchen. Instead, be informed by any neighboring floor tiles in the same way you would with wall color and choose a tile that’s sympathetic to it and you’ll still create a sense of flow and order. Being mindful of mistakes when choosing tiles will guarantee a cohesive design strategy.

Sticking to conversations in color, because tiles are often thought of as a material first and foremost, they aren’t always woven into your kitchen’s color palette in the way they should be. Like worktops, people often simply see them as a stone surface that’ll bed into your kitchen whatever happens. It’s crucial to avoid common mistakes choosing tiles that disrupts color continuity in your kitchen.

But tiles are one of your kitchen’s greatest areas of color, texture and even pattern (if you so choose), so to get them looking their best, they should really talk the same language as your cabinet and wall color.

As a working example, see this charcoal grey kitchen by @emmarosestyle. With crisp white walls as a blank canvas, she’s added warmth underfoot with our Marlborough parquet terracotta floor tiles whose tones are repeated in the copper worktop. Deep grey on her cabinets adds depth and then she’s woven in a third hue via her Lyme ceramic green metro tiles in Olive that feel right at home because of her many accents of potted greenery. An example of kitchen floor tiles, wall tiles and paint color working in perfect harmony. Avoiding mistakes when choosing tiles ensures harmonized integration of colors and textures.

Porcelain Decor Tiles 120x60cm

So, you’re a sucker for stone – maybe a marble mosaic in a beautiful teardrop or love the idea of a crackle glazed tile in a rich green hue for the walls in your kitchen but you forget that some materials need a little TLC. One of the biggest mistakes people make is not taking care of their stone and tiles – whether it’s a gorgeous terracotta, or a crackle glaze tile, you need to remember to seal them and repeat the sealing drill every year, or so.

Polished Grey Porcelain Tiles