Get your garden ready for Summer with tile

Plants and flowers can add colour and texture to your garden but this could be the perfect opportunity to take your outdoor area and inject it with personality and design by using tiles to enhance your outdoor space, so in the same way that we, here at The Tile Place, we’d like to help you tackle the idea of injecting the same design and personality into your own Outdoor space.

In Britain we live in an area exposed to frosts and freezing conditions that is then eventually followed by a thaw, you will need an outdoor patio tile that can withstand diverse, all year round, changes in temperature. Water absorption rates between porcelain and sandstone are very different and the latter, being very porous may crack when frozen. Porcelain tiles, on the other hand, absorb very little moisture, meaning they are really easy to maintain as stains don’t get into the body of the tile, unlike natural stone for example. But it also means water cannot penetrate into the core of the product and then expand when it freezes. That is what causes so many products to crack in the cold weather as the water within it expands in the cold.

A patio that’s only used when the sun is shining is a different matter. A frost-resistant, matt-finished porcelain tile would be ideal, even when it isn’t actually classed as anti-slip. However, we would strongly suggest you avoid any tiles with a polished surface as simply walking from moist grass onto this type of surface could be risky. I know many people are used to seeing polished marble used externally abroad, but natural stones do absorb a certain amount of moisture through the tiny pores within the product and it is never as slippery when wet as shiny porcelain, despite this, it cannot cope with frost, so isn’t as great a choice as a matt-finish tile.

Tiles are just so varied in style you can inject the same personality into your garden as you can in your home.