Chiswick: Entrance Hall and Understairs WC

The floors in older residential properties in London are rarely as flat or as solid as they look. Before any tiling began on this Chiswick project, the floor across both the entrance hall and the understairs WC was reinforced using 12mm cement fibre boards, fixed down to create a firm, stable surface that would not flex or move once the tiles were laid. Cement fibre boarding at this thickness gives the kind of rigidity that a timber subfloor on its own cannot provide, and it is the correct preparation for a patterned tile at this format where any movement in the substrate will show as cracking at the joints over time.
The tile is a Spanish printed porcelain at 200 x 200mm in a black and white geometric diamond pattern. Printed porcelain carries the pattern across the face of each tile, which means the repeat has to be set out carefully across the full floor plan before laying starts. In an entrance hall with a staircase cutting into one side and a doorway at the other, the setting out has to account for the room shape so the pattern reads correctly from the front door all the way down the hall. Getting the pattern to arrive at the walls and the staircase base without awkward cuts or broken geometry requires planning.

The floor was levelled across both spaces before the tiling programme began. The same tile was used in the understairs WC so the two spaces read as one continuous floor when the WC door is open. The WC walls are tiled in white metro tiles, finished at the top with a brass trim that gives the tiling a clean horizontal line and acts as a natural break between the tiled lower wall and the painted wall above.
The brass trim and the brass fixtures throughout the WC suit the warmth of the geometric floor pattern and give the small room a considered finish. The full project, entrance hall floor and WC floor and walls, was completed in two weeks.