Sheeted versus individual Victorian floor tiles
Individual tiles
Individual tiles are exactly that, supplied as the specific shapes and sizes you need to complete your victorian floor as designed and supplied by us. We will often draw your area to scale to accurately plan the combination of pattern and border design and colours you choose to make sure it sits nicely and is as symmetrical and nice-looking as possible.
Sheeted tiles
These come supplied as repeating tesellating modules that come pre-stuck to a mesh or plastic sheet that is laid directly to the floor. They are sold as being easier and quicker to lay by your tiler but this isn't often the case. Reproduction Victorian, Edwardian and Minton tiles can be very complicated in nature depending on the size, shape and complexity of pattern and border chosen and as specialists that have designed and supplied thousands of these floors, we know every area is different. Subtle differences in the layout of your room or the size can have a big impact to where and how the pattern will sit and where it can be made symmetrical. Sheeted tiles do not give us/you the flexibility in the design you can have and they do not give the tiler the flexibility to manipulate the tiles themselves to accommodate these subtle differences in layout and size.
For example, if your hallway is 1 metre wide, to get the pattern symmetrical the border may need to come in at either side by a centimetre or two. We, when designing and the tiler, when laying the floor can do this by manipulating each grout joint width by a tiny fraction - either by spacing each tile out by a millimetre or reducing the grout joint by a millimetre to fit the border in nicely and make sure it sits properly.
Sheeted tiles do not give you this critical method of properly fitting in your chosen pattern, especially if it is a more complex one with lots of small tiles. The sheets go down as is and the tiler either has to cut the pattern wherever it falls which gives you an unclean and unsymmetrical look, or they have to use terrible-looking small squares in the border instead.
On the left, we have spaced the individual tiles out slightly to create a clean looking border that keeps the pattern symmetrical. On the right, the only option with sheeted tiles supplied as full repeating modules is to cut the squares in the middle which looks poor - this is the downside of sheeted tiles.
We have found in our experience that only in specific circumstances do sheeted tiles drastically reduce the time and complexity of laying these floors, and if you don't have a room with a uniform shape and size, like an L-shape or lots of doorways you may end up with a border like the one above or an unsymmetrical pattern at each side.
