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Honored Contributor
Posts: 24,102
Registered: ‎03-09-2010

Smooth shiny tiles are primarily a slip and fall hazard for the larger tiles. Grout lines tend to stop slips and falls. If you go smooth and shiny, go for smaller tiles and you'll have minimal worries about slipping and falling. A few years back Architectural Digest featured a bathroom where they'd done a bathroom floor in 4' X 6' polished marble tiles. I joked at the time that each tile should come with a certificate for a free hip replacement. You might as well put down ice as polished tiles that large.

 

My bathroom is about a 6' X 6' cube with even less floor area as the tub takes up a lot of the floor so I could have made a template and gotten a single piece of polished marble from a countertop maker if I'd wished to for the floor and had a seamless floor with no grout lines at all. Just try walking on that though and you'll understand why no one does that. I opted for smaller polished tiles with lots of grout lines and no falls.

 

There are anti-slip additives you can apply to a tile floor, but about the only way you can know to reapply them is when you start to slip and fall.

 

As to cracked tiles, a cracked tile usually indicates an installation issue. Installed properly the tile should never crack. It may chip if it's a ceramic tile revealing the base under the glaze which is why many prefer porcelain tles which are the same color all the way through, but a crack is more of an installation failure. Unless you're dropping a sledge hammer or cannon ball on a tile, it shouldn't crack. (And installed properly even in those circumstances it would more shatter in a series of radial cracks rather than a single crack.)

Fly!!! Eagles!!! Fly!!!
Honored Contributor
Posts: 14,930
Registered: ‎03-11-2010

Re: Flooring tiles

[ Edited ]

I have dropped a Corelle plate on tile floor that shattered & went clear into the dining room & hallway. It did not crack the tile.

I also had a large bottle of head country bbq sauce (when it was still bottled in glass) fall out of one of those plastic grocery store bags while I was bringing in groceries. I had bbq sauce all over the tile floor, refrigerator, cabinets, my legs, sandals etc. It did not crack the tile.

 

Valued Contributor
Posts: 515
Registered: ‎07-12-2010

I recently had my whole kitchen tiles removed and replaced with vinyl plank (looks like hardwood).  I LOVE it!!

The tiles were cold and hard on my legs/back  when standing for long periods in the kitchen cooking.  Also I hated when I dropped something and it would break.  Now I don't have to worry about it anymore. 

The vinyl has a lifetime warranty and is so much easier to clean than the tiles. ...I hated the grout lines and having to move something across the tiles/grout lines, the wheels would get caught up in the them. 

When your visitors are sitting at the kitchen table and complain about their feet being cold,  ... not good...

I have an open concept and now with the planks throughout, everything flows nicely.

I would never have tiles again...JMO...

 

Honored Contributor
Posts: 24,102
Registered: ‎03-09-2010

@Nightowlz wrote:

I have dropped a Corelle plate on tile floor that shattered & went clear into the dining room & hallway. It did not crack the tile.

I also had a large bottle of head country bbq sauce (when it was still bottled in glass) fall out of one of those plastic grocery store bags while I was bringing in groceries. I had bbq sauce all over the tile floor, refrigerator, cabinets, my legs, sandals etc. It did not crack the tile.

 


Yeah. If a tile is installed properly it shouldn't crack when you drop something on it. If you drop something heavy enough you can get a radial type fracture/shattering, but a crack shouldn't happen from dropping something on the tile.

Fly!!! Eagles!!! Fly!!!