Tessellated Tiles

FAQs

• What tessellated tile pattern suits my style of house?

  The right pattern depends primarily on your home's architectural era. Several patterns — including the Bath (checkerboard), Olde English (octagon and dot), Killara, and Stanmore — work across multiple periods, from Victorian through to Inter-war homes. For these versatile patterns, what changes between eras is the colour combination, not the pattern itself.

  More geometrically complex patterns tend to be period-specific. Patterns such as the Bristol, Devon, Brighton, and Fitzroy suit Gothic Revival, Italianate, and Boom Style homes (roughly 1870s–1890s). Highly elaborate designs — Woollahra, Petersham, Manchester — reflect the decorative richness of late Victorian Boom Style architecture. As the Federation period arrived, patterns simplified: Raglan, Annandale, Leeds, Windsor, and York became the dominant choices, typically without encaustics. By the California Bungalow era, palettes and patterns had simplified further still, with the Raglan, Killara, and Olde English among the most common selections.

• Can I change the colours in a tessellated tile pattern?

  Yes — all colours in any tessellated pattern can be customised. Because tiles are supplied as loose components, any colour in the range can be substituted or removed. What determines a pattern's suitability for a particular style of architecture is less the pattern itself than the colours used.

  As a guide to historically appropriate palettes: Victorian floors of the 1870s–1890s typically featured red, oatmeal, and coffee as dominant colours, with black, white, and deep sky blue as accents. The late 1880s introduced pale blue, mauve, pink, and light green — used sparingly, these are characteristic of Boom Style houses. By the early 20th century these accent colours had largely disappeared; by the end of the First World War, tessellated floors were being executed in a very limited palette of brown, coffee, and oatmeal, with red as an optional accent.

• Do tessellated tiles need to be sealed?

  For fully vitrified porcelain tessellated tiles — the type supplied by Olde English Tiles — sealing is optional, not necessary. Winckelmans vitrified porcelain has a porosity level of 0.1%–0.5%, which is below the European standard for porcelain tiles and makes the tiles virtually impervious to staining.

  If you choose to seal, wait a few days after installation until the cement film has been thoroughly removed, and use a quality sealer formulated specifically for vitrified porcelain. Encaustic cement tiles are a different matter — being porous, they should always be sealed before use.

• How much does it cost to lay tessellated tiles?

  Olde English Tiles does not price installation by the square metre. Every job is quoted individually based on the specific work required on site — because two jobs of the same area can vary significantly in complexity, preparation, and time.

  The factors that most affect installation cost are: the condition of the existing substrate (whether it needs to be broken up, levelled, or waterproofed), the complexity of the pattern (a simple checkerboard lays faster than an intricate multi-piece border with panels), the shape of the area (a straight rectangular verandah is more straightforward than a curved path), and site access. An upstairs bathroom in a terrace house is a different undertaking to a ground-floor front pathway with direct street access.

  As a general guide, the cost of the tiles is a reasonable proxy for the cost of installation — if the tiles cost $X, budget a similar amount for installation. But this is a rule of thumb, not a quote. The only reliable way to get an accurate price is to have our install team visit the site.