This week’s guest interview is with Luke Sweeney, owner of Dublin-based tile company
Tiles.ie. It struck me recently that I’ve very rarely mentioned tiles in this blog so I decided to ask Luke some questions surrounding tiles and I hope you all find it an interesting interview.
Luke, your Tiles shop is based in Terenure. However, do you offer an online sales service to people from all over Ireland?
We’ve been based in Terenure since 2002. Initially we were very much a locally based store but within a few years ,in partnership with some wonderful architects and designers we worked on homes and projects throughout Ireland and a small number abroad.
Increasingly our first point of contact with our customers is online. We did consider offering an online sample service however we feel that its extremely important to chat with prospective customers and explain all the pros and cons of each material they are considering using in order to be able to help them make an informed decision. Once we have done that we will gladly arrange to provide samples or indeed call with them if its deemed neccessary. In July we are launching live chat on the site where vistiors can have their questions answered as they browse.
What is your USP?
I would say it’s our insistence on giving customers the pros AND cons of the various options open to them. We would rather lose a sale than have a customer purchase a product that’s not suitable for their needs.
So many tile shops offer so many different shades of creams and beige for bathrooms – is it really the most popular seller or is it just the tile shops are playing too safe? What colour tiles would you recommend for a standard sized bathroom (choosing something that will not date too quickly) for someone who would like to move away from cream, white and beige but yet wants a colour and design that will last some time.
There was a danger at one point that Ireland had gone from 40 shades of green to 40 shades or cream!- Cream and Ivory still outsells all other colors combined by a factor of 2 to 1 (down from 4 to 1 at their peak). Unfortunately a lot of the blame does lie with tile shops, in particular the large warehouse type stores. Irish tile buyers have a reputation with Italian designers for refusing to embrace the wonderful material they are producing. Our customers tend to appreciate something a little different and we don’t like to disappoint!
For something that will last some time I recommend greys as unlike creams they can be paired with cool or warm paints, papers,towels and accessories.
Do you have a statement design for a bathroom – something that would be really dramatic behind a large bath in a large bathroom?
Despite my championing of grey above I firmly believe that the bathroom is the one area of the home where you should let yourself go! Although Irish bathrooms are generally much smaller than those in the featured bathrooms here ,the use of a feature wall always adds dramatic effect. For those on a tight budget it’s not neccessay to use the more expensive decor tiles. Instead simply use a bold color such as the purple purple on which ever wall where it will have the most impact.
For quite a long time, people were tiling their whole bathroom – floor and all the walls. Is this still quite popular? (I’m asking as I love wallpaper in a bathroom and just put tiles where it is really necessary!)
It would still be more usual, however the only areas that you NEED to tile are the wet areas such as the shower walls and floors. I’m not a fan of going to the full height with large tiles (which are currently the norm) in bathrooms as it can be quite overpowering. For better proportion I would advise finishing with full tiles as opposed to cuts and leaving an untiled area of around 10-15% of the ceiling height. There is no hard and fast rule as to how much you should and shouldn’t tile- whatever suits you best. One of my favorite bathrooms is in Dublin’s Mansion house and it has no tiles whatsoever!
Can you explain the difference between porcelain and ceramic tiles for our readers?
How long have we got? The names are sometimes interchanged and they share many attributes. Until very recently ceramics would have been used almost everywhere an aesthtic tile was required. Porcealin tiles were generally unglazed and unfashionable and mainly used in commercial installations. Porcelain can now be considered a superior product to ceramic insofar as it is harder, frost resistant and generally more slip resistant. The majority of investment in the development of tiles over the last decade or so has been on porcelain with the result that they can now replicate almost any type of natural floor covering. Ceramics use basic glazing and screen print technology which is of more benefit to producing the vibrant colors more usually found in wall tiles.. The majority of quality floor tiles are now porcelain. The minimalist trends of the last number of years meant they were often the tile of choice for bathroom walls also but now that color is returning for bathrooms so too are ceramics.
What floor tiles (in material and design) would you recommend for the hall floor of a Victorian home?
It’s becoming more difficult in recent years to source reproduction Victorain tiles. Traditional large English manufacturers such as Pilkingtons have closed as their cost base was high in comparison to European and Asian rivals. There are some small niche players remaining and I would encourage those who have the budget to support them in their efforts to continue .For those who prefer a simpler look a white limestone paired with a black insert look well although strictly speaking this is proably more Georgian.
If you have any questions for Luke that I haven’t covered, do pop your question in the comments box or check out his site at
Tiles.ie.
There’s lots of our other lovely items featured in it too. Munster Interiors is on the shelves now too and it arrived this morning so no prizes for guessing what I’ll be doing tonight! My ‘Blog Watch’ feature is back in it too.
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