Bathroom Tiling in Derby

Bathroom tiling in Derby is one of those jobs that looks simple from a showroom display and turns out to be anything but, once the old tiles come off and you find out what's actually going on underneath. Old adhesive on an uneven solid floor, a plasterboard wall gone soft behind the bath panel, a shower area that was never properly tanked in the first place - these are the things that decide whether a tiling job lasts fifteen years or starts weeping at the grout lines within two winters. Derby Bathroom Fitter tiles bathrooms across the city and the wider county as one part of a full design and installation service, so the tiling always sits inside a proper waterproofing and levelling job rather than being treated as a cosmetic finish bolted on at the end.

If your bathroom needs more than a re-tile - a new suite, a walk-in shower, a full reconfiguration of the room - it's worth looking at the full bathroom design and installation service, since tiling planned and priced alongside the rest of the room tends to hold up better than tiling added on to a job someone else has already half-started.

• Full strip-out and disposal of old tiles and adhesive, with the substrate properly checked before anything new goes up
• Substrate preparation and self-levelling compound where a solid or timber floor is out of true
• Tanking and waterproof membrane to shower enclosures, wet walls and any floor area that sees standing water
• Wall and floor tiling in ceramic, porcelain, natural stone or glass, supplied and fitted as part of the job
• Large-format and patterned layouts, including herringbone, brick-bond and feature-wall designs
• Trims, edging and movement joints finished to suit the tile and the room
• Grouting and silicone sealing to every wet joint, including bath, shower and basin surrounds
• Matching or replacing individual damaged tiles where a small repair is genuinely all that's needed
• Adhesive selection suited to underfloor heating where it's going in alongside the tiling
• CAD and 3D drawings before a single tile is cut, and a fixed, itemised quote agreed before work starts
• Full waste clearance handled by a licensed waste carrier once the job's complete

• The cost of the tiles themselves, since prices vary hugely by material and are itemised separately in the quote once you've chosen
• Structural floor strengthening or joist work, if the existing substrate can't safely take the weight of large-format porcelain or natural stone
• Relocating plumbing or electrics to move a shower, basin or socket position - handled in-house but priced and agreed as its own line, not folded silently into a tiling quote
• Removal of asbestos-containing adhesive or backing board, which needs a specialist referral rather than being tiled straight over
• Treating a re-tile as a purely cosmetic job on an older solid floor without at least checking the existing waterproofing first - tiling over a hidden damp problem only delays it, it doesn't fix it

1. Enquiry and a look at what's really there -- You get in touch and the same person who visits for the design consultation also checks the room itself - the wall build-up (plasterboard, block or timber stud), the floor construction, any obvious damp staining or movement, and how door thresholds, sockets and fittings will affect where the cuts fall. None of that's visible from a showroom sample board, which is why it gets checked in the room, not guessed at over the phone.
2. Tile choice, quantities and lead times -- Once you've picked a tile, the exact area gets measured to work out how many boxes are needed, plus a sensible overage for cuts, breakages and a few spares kept back for future repairs. Natural stone and some porcelain ranges vary slightly between batches or dye lots, so anything ordered gets checked for a consistent run, and larger or imported tiles are flagged early if they'll take a few weeks to arrive rather than being available off the shelf.
3. Strip-out and substrate testing -- Old tiles and adhesive come off and the substrate underneath gets tested properly - a straight edge or laser across the floor to check for dips and high spots, and a check for flex on a suspended timber floor, which behaves very differently under tile than solid concrete. This decides whether the job needs self-levelling compound, a flexible backer board, or just a standard prep before anything else happens.
4. Setting out, tanking and fixing -- Tiles get dry-laid first to work out where the grout lines fall, so you don't end up with a thin sliver of cut tile in the middle of a wall or right where you'd notice it. Waterproof membrane goes onto wet walls and floors before a single tile is fixed, then tiles go on with an adhesive suited to the tile size and weight - thin-bed for standard tiles, a heavier solid bed with levelling clips for large-format porcelain, to keep it flat and stop lippage between edges.
5. Grouting, movement joints, curing and clearance -- Once the adhesive's had time to cure, joints get grouted and a proper movement joint goes in at floor-wall junctions and internal corners - grout alone will crack there over time, a flexible joint won't. Silicone finishes every wet joint round the bath, shower and basin, the room's checked over for anything that needs a final tweak, and all the old tile debris and adhesive waste is cleared by a licensed waste carrier before handover.

UK-wide figures for 2026 put installed tiling at roughly £70 to £160 per square metre depending on the material, with labour alone typically running £30 to £60 per square metre on top of the tiles themselves. For a full bathroom - both walls and floor - that generally lands somewhere between £800 and £1,200 once you include adhesive, grout, trims and a standard level of prep work, before you factor in anything unusual under the surface (Checkatrade, MyJobQuote). Porcelain sits at the higher end of the material cost per square metre compared with ceramic, but it's harder wearing and less porous, which matters more on a floor than a wall. Natural stone and large-format tiles over 600x600mm push the price up further, partly because of the material itself and partly because bigger, heavier tiles need a dead-flat substrate and more skill to lay without lippage - a job that would pass on a smaller ceramic tile shows up immediately on a large porcelain slab. Where those figures don't tell the full story is everything that happens before the first tile goes on: stripping out old tiling, checking what's underneath, levelling an uneven floor and tanking a shower area properly all add real cost and are exactly the parts a bargain quote tends to skip. As part of a full bathroom package, design, supply, installation and project management with Derby Bathroom Fitter typically starts from around £5,000 depending on room size, the products chosen and any building work needed - tiling priced as a stand-alone element within that will vary by room size and tile choice. None of this replaces an actual number for your bathroom. A proper quote needs a site visit to check the floor construction, the current state of the walls, and what you want the finished room to look like, which is why the initial design consultation is free and comes before any figure is put on paper.

Tiling is the last trade to touch a bathroom, which means it inherits every mistake made by the trades before it - a wall that isn't properly flat, a shower valve fitted in the wrong spot, a floor that's still slightly damp under the surface. Because plastering, plumbing, electrics and gas work all sit with the same team rather than being handed off to whichever contractor a tiler happens to be working alongside that week, those problems tend to get caught and corrected before the tiler ever picks up a tile. A wall out of true by even a few millimetres shows up as uneven grout lines or tiles that won't sit flush, and it's far cheaper to sort with a plasterer before tiling starts than to fight around it afterwards with packers and extra adhesive. If a shower valve or socket needs moving to suit the new layout, that gets done and checked before the tiler arrives, rather than squeezed in around tiling that's already half finished - which is usually how you end up with a valve sitting slightly off-centre in a feature tile. One project manager tracks the whole sequence from strip-out through to the final grout line, so the plasterer, the plumber and the tiler are all working to the same measurements and the same plan instead of turning up in whatever order happens to suit them, which is where most of the mismatches and callbacks on a multi-contractor bathroom job actually come from.

Derby is home ground, and the type of job varies a fair bit by area. City-centre flats around Derby Cathedral and the Cathedral Quarter tend to be smaller bathrooms in older or converted buildings, where space planning and tile size matter more than anything else - a large-format tile can make a tight en-suite feel bigger, but only if the layout's been measured properly first. Out towards Allestree, Darley Abbey, Markeaton and Quarndon, close to Markeaton Park and Darley Park, jobs are more often full family bathroom retiles in detached or semi-detached houses with solid concrete ground floors, which is generally more straightforward to tile onto than a suspended timber floor once it's levelled. Mickleover, Littleover and Breadsall see a similar mix, along with a fair number of loft or garage conversion en-suites where tanking the new wet area properly is the part that can't be skipped. Around Pride Park Stadium, in the Spondon, Alvaston and Chellaston commuter belt, most work is fitted around people's working week - evening and weekend site visits, tiling scheduled to suit. Further out along the Derwent Valley Mills UNESCO World Heritage corridor - Belper, Duffield and Milford - a good number of the properties are older stone or brick-built homes where conservation sensitivity matters, and reclaimed-look or period-appropriate tiling is often the better fit than something too contemporary. Toward the Peak District around Matlock, Bakewell and Ashbourne, natural stone tiling gets requested more often, in keeping with the local stone buildings and the premium end of the renovation market that area tends to attract. The team also covers Nottingham, Sheffield, Nottinghamshire, Long Eaton, Ilkeston, Ripley, Heanor, Swadlincote, Burton on Trent, Borrowash, Alfreton, Willington, Repton and Buxton - if you're outside the immediate Derby postcodes, it's worth a call to confirm the visit works logistically before booking a design consultation.

If your bathroom's on the list for this year rather than next, book the design visit sooner rather than later - the team only run one project at a time, so slots for autumn and winter tiling work fill up from late summer onwards. Get in touch for a free home consultation and a fixed, itemised quote, with CAD drawings so you can see the finished room before a single tile is cut. No showroom appointment, no pressure to decide on the day.

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