Tiling is quoted per square metre, which gives everyone the comfortable impression that it is a unit of work. It is not. It is a unit of area. The same ten square metres can be a straightforward day or a week of preparation with a day of tiling at the end, and the difference is almost never visible in the room before someone starts opening things up.
What we charge
Our tiling labour is published by tile size, because tile size is what changes the work:
- 600x600 and 800x800 — £55/m²
- 1200x600 — £70/m²
Both figures exclude VAT and both are labour. Tiles, adhesive, grout, tanking and any preparation the wall or floor turns out to need are separate, and a fixed itemised quote is confirmed before work begins.
The gap between those two rates is the honest bit, and it is the reason this page exists. Most people assume the bigger tile is the cheaper job — fewer units, fewer joints, less time. It is not. A 1200x600 costs more per square metre to lay than an 800x800 does, and it costs more for reasons that have nothing to do with anyone's margin. It is heavier, it is a two-person lift, it needs a flatter background than a small tile will tolerate, it needs supporting while the adhesive grabs, and it needs cutting equipment and somewhere to use it. Every one of those is time, and the rate reflects it.
This page explains what moves the number beyond the rate. It is worth reading before you compare quotes, because the cheapest per-square-metre figure on a page is frequently the one that has left the expensive part out.
The substrate decides most of it
If you take one thing from this page, take this. The single biggest variable in a tiling price is what you are tiling onto, and in Central London that is rarely good news.
Period walls are not flat and not plumb. A Victorian or Edwardian bathroom wall in a Bayswater conversion may be lath and lime plaster, later gypsum patches, a bit of hardboard where something was boxed in, and a stud wall added in the 1980s, all in the same elevation. Tiling wants a flat, sound, stable, appropriately dry background. Almost none of that qualifies without work.
So the real question in any quote is what happens before the first tile. Stripping back to a sound background. Removing old tiles, which may bring the plaster with them. Overboarding, or replacing failed plaster. Battening out and re-boarding a wall that leans. Sorting out a stud wall that flexes. Levelling a floor that dips towards a wall. On a floor, deflection matters too: tile does not bend, and a springy period timber floor will find the weakest joint eventually. Stiffening the deck, adding a suitable board, or using an uncoupling layer are all real costs that exist entirely below the finish.
This is why a quote given from a photograph is a guess. Nobody can see a lath wall or a bouncing joist in a picture of a bathroom.
Tile size, and why bigger is not simpler
Instinct says fewer tiles means less work. Sometimes true, often not.
Small tiles are more units to lay, more joints, and slower on plain field. Mosaics on a sheet are slower again, and detailing them around edges and outlets takes real time.
Large-format tiles reverse the problem. They cover ground quickly but they are unforgiving: a large tile cannot follow an undulating background, so any dip shows as lipping between tiles, and the flatness tolerance you need behind them is far tighter than for a small tile. They are heavy, awkward, frequently a two-person lift, and they need proper support while the adhesive grabs. Cutting them requires the right equipment and a place to do it, which in an occupied fourth-floor flat with no outside space is a genuine logistical problem rather than a detail. We go into this in our guide to large-format tiles in London flats.
So size does not scale cost in a straight line. It changes what the job is, and our rates say so out loud: £55/m² for 600x600 and 800x800, £70/m² for 1200x600, both excluding VAT and both labour. A supplier who quotes one flat rate for every tile in the catalogue is either carrying the large-format risk in the small-format price, which means you are subsidising somebody else's job, or they are going to have a conversation with you on the day the pallet arrives.
There is a design point buried in this too. If you are choosing between an 800x800 and a 1200x600 for a modest Central London bathroom, the rate difference is real but it is rarely the deciding factor on a small area — the deciding factor is whether the room is flat enough to take the larger tile without lipping, and whether the tile can physically get up the stairs or into the lift in one piece. Ask that before you fall in love with a sample.
Material matters more than people expect
The tile you choose changes the labour, not just the material line.
Standard ceramic is forgiving. Porcelain is denser and harder, slower to cut cleanly, and unforgiving of a poor cut. Natural stone brings its own set: marble and limestone vary between pieces so they need laying out and blending rather than pulling from the box in order, they can be brittle at the edges, some are porous and need sealing before and after grouting, and some are marked permanently by the wrong grout or the wrong cleaner. Anything with a pattern that must run, a vein that must match, or a directional finish adds setting-out time and adds waste.
Two jobs of identical area, identical layout and identical substrate can carry very different labour purely on material choice. That is not a supplier being difficult. It is the tile behaving differently.
Cuts and setting out: where the skill and the hours are
Open field tiling is the fast part. Everything else is the job.
Count the cuts in a real Central London bathroom. Around the bath and its edge. Around a basin pedestal or a wall-hung frame. Around the WC. Around every pipe penetration, and there are always more than you think. Into corners that are not square, because they never are. Around a window reveal. Around a soil pipe boxing. Into an inspection hatch that has to be tileable and removable. Around switch drops, shaver sockets and lighting. Small rooms are cut-heavy by nature, which is why a compact W1 bathroom can carry a higher effective rate than a large simple floor.
Setting out is the invisible half. Deciding where the datum sits, where the cuts land, which wall is worst and how the error is distributed across the room, how a pattern centres on the bath, how the floor grid relates to the wall grid, and how to avoid a sliver of tile in the most visible corner. Get it right and nobody notices. Get it wrong and you see it every day. A tiler who spends the first morning setting out and no time laying is doing the job correctly.
Layout choices you make also add labour. Herringbone, brick bond with a pattern that must run, borders, feature panels and mitred external corners all cost more than a straight stack — mitres especially, because they are slow and merciless.
Waterproofing, and what it is really protecting
In a shower or wet area, tanking is not optional and not a place to economise. Tile and grout are not a waterproof layer; the membrane behind them is. This is a real cost in materials and time, including drying and curing time.
The reason it earns its place is the building. In a flat, a failed shower does not damage your floor. It damages the ceiling of the flat below, and then it is a liability conversation with a neighbour, two insurers and a managing agent. That is why we would rather explain the cost of doing it properly than win a job by leaving it out. If the tiling sits inside a bathroom refurbishment, it is part of a sequence that also engages ventilation, sanitation and electrics under the Building Regulations, and often the freeholder's consent — see our guide to freeholder consent for a bathroom refurbishment.
Access, protection and the block
This is the part that makes a Central London price genuinely different from a suburban one, and it has nothing to do with tiling skill.
Tiles are heavy. A bathroom's worth of porcelain is a serious weight, and it has to reach a flat that is probably several floors up. That usually means the lift, which usually means booking it with the porter, protecting it, and sometimes only being allowed to use it in a window. Communal carpet and stair runners need protecting properly. How that is arranged with the building is set out in our guide to porter access for mansion-block works. On most streets in W1, W2 and W9 there is nowhere to park, so deliveries land in a loading window or they do not land at all.
Cutting is noisy and wet, and in an occupied flat it needs a controlled place to happen. Noisy work is commonly restricted to set hours, particularly in Westminster, as covered in our guide to working hours restrictions. A job that runs eight hours a day elsewhere may run five here, and the same work then takes more days. That is in every honest quote whether or not it is itemised.
Occupied or empty, and waste
An empty flat is a cheaper job: no protection to build and rebuild, no working around a household, no daily clean-down to a domestic standard, no phasing around a family needing the only bathroom. An occupied flat means all of that, and it is real time.
Waste is its own line. Old tiles, hacked-off plaster, packaging, adhesive and grout bags, spoil from any levelling. It is heavy, it is bulky, it goes out through the same protected communal parts the tiles came in through, and it must be disposed of properly. In a block with no parking and a booked lift, removing waste is a planned operation. Where a quote is notably cheap, this is one of the places to check.
How to compare two tiling quotes
Ask the same questions of each. What preparation is included, and what happens if the wall comes off with the old tiles? Is tanking included, and to what extent? Who is responsible for setting out, and have they seen the room? Is protection of communal parts included? Are the block's working hours understood and priced? Who removes the waste, and how? Is waste allowance for cuts and breakage in the tile quantity, and who is buying the tiles?
A rate is only comparable if the scope behind it is. The lowest number on a page is frequently the one with the most left to be discovered later.
How we quote it
We look at the room before we price it, because the substrate is the job and you cannot see it from a photo. The published labour rates are £55/m² for 600x600 and 800x800 and £70/m² for 1200x600, both excluding VAT, and we confirm a fixed itemised quote before we start so the price you agree is the price you pay. We separate preparation from tiling so you can see both, and we tell you which of the two rates your tile falls into before you buy it rather than after. If you are regrouting rather than retiling, our guide to regrouting versus retiling may save you the larger job entirely, and for ongoing upkeep our maintenance work covers the smaller fixes.