When you’re taking on a renovation, whether it be retiling your bathroom or building an entirely new area of your house, the finer details are important. They’re what stops your new room from having holes that water can get into or a new wall having weak points that can lead to cracks over time. However, for our purposes, the fine details are what make a tiling job look professional.

This is why your choice of tile spacer sizes can be hugely important in your finished product. Choose it well, and you can have a bathroom or kitchen area akin to the finest in modern home design. Choose it poorly, however, and you might find yourself in a difficult situation that can be hard to get out of.

At Tileveling, we are dedicated to providing a wide selection of tile spacer sizes and varieties for our customers to choose from. So, to ensure that you have a solid idea of why that’s important, let’s get into our complete guide to sizing your tile spacers!

Why Are Tile Spacers Important?

Before we get into sizes, it’s important first to understand why we use tile spacers in the first place. In short, tile spacers ensure that your tiles are all laid out evenly and correctly before they are set. This provides you with an extra layer of support when planning out a bathroom renovation while also protecting you from human error. So, if you want all your tiles to be perfectly aligned, your tile spacers are going to be an essential part of that process.

What Tile Spacer Sizes Are Available?

Depending on how granular you’d like to get, there is an enormous variety of tile spacer sizes that are technically available. With that said, however, there is a certain range that will make up about 90% of all tile spacer sizes used. This would be in between 1mm and 5mm spacers, with larger ones than that being significantly less common.

What Tile Spacer Size Should I Pick?

As with most parts of your renovation, this will primarily come down to personal preference. Whilst the most common sizes are approximately 2-3mm if you’re placing wall tiles and around 3-5mm if you’re using them for flooring, you and/or your client will have the final say on the spacing to tile ratio that works best for your particular project. Just keep in mind that the larger your spacing, the more prominent your between-tile grout will be. So, we would suggest only going for larger tile spacer sizes if you have a particular aesthetic that you’re looking to achieve with this tile grout visibility.

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Getting tile spacers to suit your project doesn’t have to be a complex process, but it does pay to know what you’re looking for. So, plan ahead, talk to your provider, and find out which tile spacer size is going to be right for you. Then, once you’re ready, explore Tileveling’s range of tile levelling systems and more!

How Do You Place Tile Spacers? A Beginner’s Guide to Using Tile Spacers Effectively

Whenever you’re taking on a home renovation job, the finer details mean everything to your finished product. This is especially true when discussing items like tiles, as having unevenly-placed floor or wall additions can make a space feel quite disjointed. This is why tile spacers exist, providing you with a simple way to create a completely uniform tiled space without the hassle of more manual methods. That said, it is still important to know how to get the most out of your tile spacers before your project begins, and that’s why we’re here.

At Tileveling, we think tile spacers are enormously important. After all, we based our entire business around providing people with a simple, easy way to get perfect-looking tile installations every time. So, how do you place tile spacers? And what do you need to get the most out of their usage? Without further adieu, let’s get into it.

What Are Tile Spacers?

This is a completely natural question for those that have never needed to take on a tile project. They’re very niche items with a specific use that they happen to be fantastic for. Tile spacers are small, often t-shaped objects that are made from plastic, and can come in a variety of sizes to suit different styles and jobs. With the use of tile spacers, you can ensure an even gap between all of your tiles, which will ensure the cleanest results when it comes time to grout.

Whilst their small size and plastic manufacturing would perhaps lead you to believe that they are a single-use item, they can generally be removed after installation and used again in later projects. Just make sure you look out for any damage that may compromise the sizing of these items, as breakage could potentially lead to inconsistent results.

Why Are Tile Spacers Used?

Depending on the type of tile that you’re looking to put down, tile spacers can end up actually providing a number of different valuable results. For example, with mosaic tiles that can be of different shapes and sizes, manually keeping all of your tiles evenly in place can be nearly impossible without tile spacers. Alternatively, if you’re working with more traditional square tiles and want to keep them completely uniform, then tile spacers are practically a necessity to avoid any human error. In other words, if you want to make sure that you have the most control over your tile spacing possible, you’ll want to make sure you’re using tile spacers.

How Do I Get the Most Out of Tile Spacers?

Whilst they may seem quite self-explanatory, there are things you can do to make sure you’re getting the best experience out of your tile spacer usage. These include:

Buying High-Quality Spacers

As we mentioned earlier, you can absolutely use the same spacers across multiple projects, but only if you’re getting spacers that were made to last. So, do what you can to ensure you’re getting a higher quality product, even if that means spending a little more.

Try to Estimate What You’ll Need

While we said spending a little more is good, that doesn’t mean you should be overbuying. Based on the number of tiles you’ll be placing, you should have a good idea of how many tile spacers you’ll need. So, try to aim for approximately that number, if not a few more for those “just in case” moments.

Time Your Tile Spacer Usage

There will be a time in which it is ideal for you to remove your spacers, approximately twenty or thirty minutes into your adhesive beginning to set. The reason this is so important to remember is that there will be time earlier in the setting process in which removing the spacer will also allow your tiles to move around. Alternatively, if you’re trying to remove the spacers too late, you’ll likely find that they are stuck, which is then an issue you’re going to need to deal with. This leads to our next major point:

Never Just Decide to Grout Over Your Spacers

This may seem like a desirable choice, especially if you’ve already left the spacers in for too long, but just grouting over the spacers will likely damage your floor and lead to very amateurish results in terms of your tiling’s overall quality. It might be annoying, but sometimes, it’s best to take the long way and do it right the second time rather than simply dealing with the mistakes of the first. You don’t want a bathroom or kitchen feeling off forever just because you are waiting too long to take out your spacers.

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Having a perfectly tiled bathroom, kitchen, or outdoor area is always going to be the work you have to put into getting it there, and with tile spacers, that work becomes so much easier and more manageable. So, focus on quality, time your spacers, and don’t cut corners, and you’ll be thanking yourself once it’s all over.

To learn more about tile spacing and levelling, stay up-to-date with the Tileveling blog, where we post helpful tips, tricks, and information on our industry regularly.