ᐅ House Planning – Minimizing Material Waste

Hello,

we are currently in the final stages of planning our house. We want to install 60x60 cm (24x24 inch) calibrated tiles in large parts of the ground floor. The largest room here is, of course, the living/dining area with an open kitchen, roughly 55 square meters (590 square feet). The room is currently 5 meters (16.4 feet) wide. Now I am wondering if it would make sense to slightly adjust the room width to avoid waste when laying the tiles later on.

My calculation:
- 8 tiles at 60 cm (24 inches) each = 480 cm (189 inches)
- 9 grout lines at 0.4 cm (0.16 inches) each = 3.6 cm (1.42 inches)
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Total width 483.6 cm (190.4 inches) plus some buffer = 485 cm (191 inches)

Reducing the room width by 15 cm (6 inches) is not a problem. The floor plan allows it, and there is still enough space.

So my question(s): Does my calculation make sense? Are 4 mm (0.16 inches) grout lines too optimistic? Is the buffer sufficient?

Making the room smaller to avoid tile waste? I don’t think I can understand that. You really can’t plan that precisely anyway, in my opinion. You don’t just throw away half a tile; you use it in the next spot where a half tile is needed. In the end, you want an 80cm (31.5 inches) size anyway, so all the replanning was for nothing. 😉

Hello!

So – to avoid waste, it’s really not worth overthinking. Also, you need to calculate correctly: 8 tiles = 7 times grout joint (for me 2mm (0.08 inches)) + 2 times wall gap (at least 10mm (0.4 inches) – and what about plaster? 🙂).

More important is the tile pattern – and that now depends on how you plan to handle the area around the doors. Will you have one or two grout joints in the doorway? It might look really bad if, instead of 60cm (24 inches) tiles, you end up installing a 20cm (8 inches) tile and then another narrow piece.

And for a room length of 10 or 11 meters (33 or 36 feet): expansion joint!?

I have parquet :p.

Best regards,
Tom.

Hello, in the example described, you have a waste of 20-30 cm (8-12 inches), since you can use both edge pieces. So we are talking about 1-2 square meters (10-20 square feet) of waste. And that’s a reason to redesign everything? Sorry, I don’t understand.