Tile Quantity Calculator for Dubai and the UAE

Somebody orders exactly the area they measured, and every single time they run short. Here is where the tiles go.

Cuts. Every edge of the room needs a cut tile, and the offcut is usually too small to use anywhere else. A room with lots of edges wastes more.

Breakage. Tiles snap during cutting, especially large format ones and especially porcelain. A few will not survive.

Faults. Open a box and one tile has a chip on a corner or a mark in the glaze. It happens.

Ten per cent is the minimum for a simple square room. Twenty per cent is realistic for anything awkward, and twenty five for large format or a pattern that has to line up.

These are the things that turn a ten per cent job into a twenty five per cent job.

Tiles are made in batches, and batches vary. Two boxes of the same tile from different production runs can differ in shade and, with some tiles, very slightly in size.

On a wall you might not notice. On a large floor in daylight you will, and there is nothing to be done about it afterwards.

So order everything at once, and check that all the boxes carry the same batch number before the tiler starts.

Then keep what is left over. A box of spare tiles in a store room is what lets you replace a cracked tile in five years without retiling the room.

This matters more than people think here, because tile ranges change often and a tile bought today may simply not exist in three years.

What you will actually find in shops here, and where each is used.

It gives you a quantity. It does not tell you whether the floor is ready for tiles, and that is where jobs actually go wrong.

A floor that is not level shows up worst with large tiles, because a long tile bridges a hollow and rocks or cracks. Levelling first is not optional with large format.

A wet area needs waterproofing under the tile. Tiles and grout are not waterproof, and in a shower or a balcony the membrane underneath is what actually keeps water out.

A floor with a drain needs a fall towards it, which has to be built into the screed rather than created with adhesive.

And movement joints matter here. A large tiled area in a hot climate expands, and without somewhere to move it lifts or cracks. In this country that is a real failure mode rather than a theoretical one.