Decorating Ideas For Tile Kitchen Floors

Hard tiles like ceramic or marble are the standard for many kitchens because of their moisture resistance and ease of cleaning. Once you decide to tile a kitchen floor, you have another choice to make: Are you going to just do a standard tiling job in one color, or are you going to take some aesthetic chances? Sometimes the first choice is the right one, depending on the kitchen, but consider some alternatives before you lay that first piece of tile.

Color and Design Schemes

Matching kitchen floor tiles to the tiles on the wall and countertop is a classic old method, but it's not the only one. The floor will be more interesting if you give it a unique color and design that augments other colors in the room rather than duplicating them. It also can tie together different parts of the room that might otherwise not work together. Try making the countertops and walls two contrasting colors, then using both of these colors on the tile floor as the two elements of a checkerboard pattern.

Mixing Finishes and Materials

Normally, you'll have all one type of tile finish on a floor--all matte, all semi-gloss or all high-gloss--but there's no structural reason you have to do that. Try buying ceramic tiles of the exact same color but in three different finishes, and lay them in an alternating pattern. The effect will be a subtle and interesting diversity of texture to the floor. For a more dramatic effect, buy the same sizes of completely different materials (say, ceramic, marble and slate) and mix them up randomly on the floor.

Painting

One unusual but perfectly valid way to redo an old ceramic tile floor that you don't like anymore is to paint it. This has to be done right or the paint will flake up off the floor. Buff the shine off the tiles with a power sander, prime it with an oil-based primer-sealer, and paint it with oil-based floor paint. There's no reason to go this kind of trouble if you're just going to paint it all one color (you might as well just lay that color of tile), so have some fun with it. Paint designs to create a "mural'' effect on the floor, perhaps with a kitchen scene, or paint a faux throw rug right into the tiles. Seal it with three coats of oil-based, floor-grade polyurethane.

Tags: ceramic marble, kitchen floor, tile floor, with oil-based