Tile Setting Plan

The start line is the whole job

Lay the first tile tight to the left wall and every cut is forced to the right hand end. If the run happens to divide evenly you get away with it. Usually it does not, and you finish on a strip an inch wide that draws the eye every time anyone walks in.

Centering the run splits that waste between both ends. Instead of one 1 inch sliver you get two 3 1/2 inch pieces, which read as deliberate. The sheet does this arithmetic for you: it counts the full tiles that fit, works out what is left, and halves it.

The rule of thumb is that if the end cut lands under about a third of a tile, drop a full tile out of the run and split the difference again.

Waste depends on the pattern, not the room

Ten percent is the figure everyone quotes and it is only right for a straight or offset layout on a simple surface. Turn the tile forty-five degrees and every edge becomes a cut: fifteen percent. Herringbone and chevron cut both ends of most pieces: twenty. A patterned tile with a repeat that has to line up can want twenty-five.

Buy the waste in the same batch as the rest. Dye lots differ, and a box bought three weeks later to finish a corner rarely matches.

What gets forgotten on the order

• The niche. A recessed shelf adds roughly two square feet once the box is lined, and it wants its own trim on four edges.
• Trim and edge profile. Where the tile stops, something has to finish it, and that is sold by the length rather than the box.
• Thinset and grout. Both depend on the tile size and the trowel notch, and the coverage on the bag is the figure to trust over anything on this page.