A guide to indoor outdoor tiles for 2024

Outside of any specific requirements you may have your your project, there are five key things to consider when you are choosing a tile. 

Design – think stone effect, quartz effect, a tile that looks like wood, concrete effect, limestone effect – the beauty of great quality porcelain is that technology means all these types of materials can be reproduced in porcelain and they can be used both inside and outside. Things to consider are that some stone effect tiles can have strong veining and that may influence how you lay the tiles eg do you try and run the veining in a direction if possible. Some wood effect tiles may only have a few patterns in which case it can be hard to make them look realistic (again a benefit of choosing a higher quality tile is that there will be more pattern repeats for ultra realism). 

Colour – most families of tiles will house several colours in the same collection giving you a number of options. Particularly outside, you may want to zone spaces so opting for a good quality tile with different colours can mean you are able to perhaps colour match your tiles inside to out and then opt for a slightly different colour to create a zoned area.

Size – tile size is key. Budget is a consideration of course as generally larger tiles tend to be more expensive, however, if you can stretch to it, particularly for a larger open plan space, it is worth going large. One consideration is tile collections where you are able to use a larger format tile inside and a smaller format outside. So our Blend collection features 1200 x 1200mm format tiles for inside (as well as a 600 x 600mm format) and outside the 2cm thick tiles are in a 600 x 600mm size. That means from inside to out you can either match sizes or go larger inside and still have a co-ordinated look and feel.

Finish – we have already looked at tile finish and the fact that inside tiles tend to have a different finish to the external tile. But it is really worth considering the overall feel of both tiles. For example, our Tone collection features inside outside tiles where the finish is very similar inside and out. This is because this tile is echoing a micro cement so it is a super modern outdoor tile with a very fine antislip finish and the indoor tile has a very fine matt finish. Contrast that with our Fusion collection which is akin more
to a rustic stone effect where the outside tile has a much more rough hewn
surface. 

Format – square tiles are less complicated as they are generally laid stacked to keep grout lines flowing. Rectangular tiles can add interest as there are options regards laying patterns. For any tile with a length of longer than 600mm it is important not to overlap the tiles by more than 1/3 when laying them. This is to avoid lippage. Regardless of the
quality of tile, a tile will naturally slightly curve along the length.