Welcome to the Interior Design podcast. I'm Hailey Roy. I'm a commercial interior designer
and I have a passion for creating functional, beautiful spaces. Over the years, I've had
the pleasure of working on a variety of projects and I've accumulated a lot of knowledge to
share. To create this podcast for you, a lot of the episodes I've teamed up with my good
friend Interior Designer and architectural designer Cheryl Sutton. Cheryl and I are
very different and often have opposing views which makes for some interesting discussion.
But it also provides you with two sides of many topics we cover. This episode, however,
I'm riding solo with the amazing Joe Burley from Solar Ceramics who has come into the
studio to talk everything tiles. We're planning to do a little extra video today to show you
some products so watch out on YouTube for that one too. I started this podcast because
I feel strongly about interior design and the importance of educating designers. A lot
of what you hear from us, you won't learn on a course. As designers, there's so much
we need to know to do our jobs well and we want to give you a forum where you can access
the information you need wherever you are. Whether you're an aspiring designer, someone
designing your own home or a seasoned professional working in residential or commercial design,
this podcast is here to help you improve and thrive. We're not about ego-stroking interviews
with big names, instead we focus on practical advice that you can apply directly to your
work. You'll learn about different products, their applications and sustainability practices.
Our goal is to equip you with the knowledge you need to excel in your projects. And remember,
if it's not fun, we're not doing it so expect a bit of humour, a few swear words and the
occasion of a new endo. Now, a quick note on production. We are interior designers and
not sound producers. I am handling the editing myself, so please be patient with any technical
glitches that happen. I am improving my production skills as the podcast progresses and I appreciate
your understanding. If there are any editors out there who'd like to volunteer their skills
in return for a mention, though, please feel free to reach out to me. Thank you for tuning
into the Interior Design Podcast. Let's do this. Hello, Jo.
Hi, Hayley.
Welcome to the Interior Design Podcast.
Thank you so much for having me here.
It's so nice to have you on the sofa. We've got another new sofa. I'm very excited.
I'm a really lovely comfy sofa.
We are now on YouTube as well, so you can check us out on YouTube if you're listening
on audio. So, today we're talking about tiles. Everything you need to know about tiles. Jo
came into our studio a while ago and...
A couple of years ago.
A couple of years ago and I just love Jo. She's amazing. She's so knowledgeable and
she taught me so much about things that I had... I mean, I've been doing this for a long
time and she was teaching me stuff, so thank you for doing that, Jo. And thank you for
coming on today. It's lovely to have you here.
You're very welcome.
So, tell us about you. What's your journey at Solas?
Shall I start from the very beginning?
Yes.
So, when I left school with a few A-levels and I wasn't very academic, I just kind of
fell into being a secretary because I didn't know what else to do and I was an awful secretary
and I hated it. And then I moved to London and I found this tiny marble masonry working
under the arches in Vauxhall where everyone was just relaxed and everyone was enjoying
what they were doing and they needed someone in the office but I could go to work in jeans
and it was just a lot.
That's always good.
Exactly. And then I just kind of fell into reactive sales so if anyone walked in off
the street, which didn't happen very often because it was in the railway orchard in
Vauxhall, I just kind of looked after them and it sort of grew from there. One of our
customers there was Domus Tiles, who are one of the biggest tile specification suppliers
in the country. They were a customer and they poached me to go and work with them. So,
I spent just over five years working at Domus and then there were lots of kind of changes
within the company and I felt like I wanted to move on and try something different and
I ended up at Solus doing exactly the same thing I did at Domus. And now I'm at Solus.
Solus was a tiny company when I joined. There were only 18 members of staff. The head office
is based up in Birmingham and it was a really small family run business but it was just
a really nice warm environment, really friendly people. They made me feel really welcome and
it's worked, touch wood. I've been there for just over 20 years. We've grown from 18 people
to over 100. We've gone from 2 million a year to an over 22 million a year.
Oh my God. It must have changed so much.
It has but we're still family run. We're a second generation family run business. So,
it's still got that small family environment feeling where everyone knows everyone. So,
if I need to speak to the guy in the sample department or one of the warehouse guys or
someone in accounts, everyone knows everyone and it's a nice friendly environment.
That's amazing. It must be a nice place to work if you've been there 20 years.
Yeah, exactly. I wouldn't have stayed if they were horrible but then monthly.
Aww, it's cool. Jo, what are you going to educate us about today?
So one of the nicer things about working in a small company is you get to see everything.
So although we have a marketing department and a fantastic creative director, we still
as sales reps get to go to the tile fairs and see what's new, what's coming up, what
the trends are around the world. So the largest tile fair, well technically the largest tile
fair is Coverings over in America but we don't go that far. We go to Europe so in Italy in
next week, next week I'm off to Italy. For the massive chassai tile fair it's like Olympia
on steroids. It's enormous. They have their own land train. It's just huge. So we get
to meet up with all the factories that we work with and there are hundreds of them.
See what's new, pick the best bits and then bring them back to you. So over the next three
or four months we'll be able to show you all the new exciting things that are coming
over to Europe. Wow. That's amazing. It's a great trip. It's incredibly hard work.
I mean last year when I was walking 40,000 steps a day for four days but it is the best
way to lose weight. If you want to lose weight, go to an exhibition. Yeah, just walk it off.
And then drink lots of prosecco all night long because it's Italy. Well that's always
good. Italy's lovely. What part of Italy is it? It's in Bologna. Oh no, this is good wine.
Great food. It's one of Parmesan cheese and the balsamic vinegar. It's just gorgeous.
Amazing. That's so cool. Do you find, some people who do travelling as a job find it
quite monotonous? Is that something that you feel like or is it, you know, you don't do
it that often so it's more exciting? I don't do it often enough. Definitely. Sometimes we
get the opportunity to take architects and designers to factories to see how tiles are
being made and we'll try and see a few different factories and that is great fun. But yeah,
I don't do that often enough. And then we've got Tresai and Savisama which is the Spanish
version in May. So we've got a couple of trips a year. Nice. Yeah. Cool. So you get away and
you enjoy it. Yeah. Because I really love travelling as well and I had a job when I
was younger though and I was travelling to Asia like four or five times a year and I
was just permanently jet lagged. Then it was like, it got really, I think I did about ten
years doing that and it got really difficult in the end because I was just like, oh no,
I'm going to jet lag again. That's a really long flight at least in a couple of hours.
Yeah. If you're in Europe it's lovely, isn't it? So let's talk about tiles. So what are
the basics about types of tiles that are available in the industry? If you split up manmade tiles
from more natural things, so your limestones, marbles, terracottas, natural stones and just
stick with tiles, generally you've got two types, porcelain tiles and ceramic tiles.
Porcelain tiles are much harder. They're fired at higher temperatures so they're frost proof
and stain proof and indestructible. They're manmade granite that's produced in a couple
of hours rather than a couple of millennia. But they're as tough as nails and they will
last forever. So they're an incredibly durable, inert, sustainable product that will outlive
all of us. Ceramic tiles aren't quite as strong. Basically they're a glaze that's manmade
on top of a clay biscuit base. They're fired at kind of eight, nine hundred degrees so
they're not quite as strong. They're a little bit easier to work with. So for example if
you were doing lots of wall tiling but needed to put in lots of holes for power points or
shower heads or whatever, it's easier to work with a ceramic tile and cut holes than it
is to work with porcelain tile. Having said that, the tiling contractors these days are
very experienced with both so you shouldn't really ever have an issue with cutting holes
and tiles. But yeah porcelain tiles definitely stronger. Generally porcelain tiles are bigger
so ceramic tiles you can go up to 300 by 600, 300 by 900 probably but not much bigger than
that. Porcelain tiles the largest you can get is 1.6 by 3.2 meters. So we can go from
really small to huge. Generally when you get over about 1200 mil square tiles will change
the way they make them. So smaller format tiles they grind up all the aggregates, the pigments,
the powders, the felt sparks and everything they're going to put into it. It's like a
cake recipe. They grind them up into a really fine powder, press them into a mold, pop them
out and fire them. When they get to the really large formats they roll them out like a giant
sheet of pasta. So they just keep rolling. Someone made a 7 meter long tile once just
to see if they could. But for practice it's huge. You only stopped at 3.2 meters because
that's what fits in a lorry. But they tend to be thinner so you'll be 6 mil for a rolled
out thin tile as opposed to 9 or 10 for a normal tile. Which means third less raw materials,
third less weight in transport, less energy required to heat them to fire them.
To them more sustainable. They tend to be more expensive though.
But they're more durable say they'll last longer. Well all porcelain tiles are incredibly
durable. They still dig up Roman mosaics that give them a clean and they look like they're
a lady yesterday kind of thing. They will outlive all of us. They'll last forever.
So there's other types of tiles isn't there? Glass, stone and encaustic. Encaustic is
that how you say it? Yes. So you've got all the natural stones.
You've marbled slates, limestones which obviously not my forte but they are real stones. They
have their own unique characteristics and beauty and quality which we try to copy with
porcelain. Always the same. Limestones and marbles are quite porous in comparison. Granite
is incredibly hard and durable. Slate the way it's made is made in sedimentary layers.
So it can fracture and split. So it's a bit more fragile. Terracotta is basically like
ceramic tiles before someone's stuck a glaze on them. But they're very traditional. You
need to seal them. They're more porous Terracotta.
They are yes. Then you've got quarry tiles which are similar but fired at slightly higher
temperatures are not as porous. But those are the things that have been around for the
longest. Thousands of years people have been using these hard surfaces, taking mud out
of the ground and baking it to make it hard or digging marble or granite out to the ground
and using that. Then you get onto things like encaustic tiles which are cement based tiles.
They tend to come from Spain and Morocco and lovely gorgeous warm locations. They build
frameworks and put metal pieces into the frameworks and pour different coloured cements in to
make beautiful patterns. They're lovely but they are cement based so they stain. You have
to seal them and look after them and they can be an absolute pain to deal with. Then
we've sort of moved on to man-made porcelain tiles and ceramic tiles in the last couple
hundred years and technologies improve them all the time. So you started taking mud out
of the ground and baking it and using it as hard surfaces and then they started glazing
them and then that's kind of evolved into porcelain tiles which are just the most practical
hard surface because you don't need to seal them. You don't need to look after them too
much. They'll never produce VACs or nasty chemicals. So from my point of view, it makes
them really easy to sell.
Yeah, so that was going to be one of my questions actually. What's the most sustainable? Is it
porcelain?
Yeah. So in what way is it sustainable?
Probably is. I mean there are some porcelain ranges which include some recycle content.
It's always a very tricky and grey area when people at the factories give us their recycle
content whether it's actually post-consumer recycle content, pre-consumer recycle content
which is a bit of an oxymoron. But yeah, there are some ranges that will include glass or
old ceramics. But generally the most sustainable part of a tile is its longevity. The fact
that it's all inert and it will last forever. Bream officially classed tiles as lasting
for 60 years. Porcelain. Porcelain tiles. Porcelain, not ceramic.
Oh, okay. We tend to use more porcelain on the floors because they're the same colour
all the way through hopefully or similar colour all the way through and if you're unlucky
enough to chip a ceramic tile it's going to be a different colour underneath the glaze.
So porcelain is a bit more durable and hard wearing. But yeah, Bream say they last for
60 years in a project but in reality they'll last for 6,000 years probably.
Can you help us understand the difference between wall tiles, floor tiles and outdoor
tiles?
I can try.
Sure you know.
Anything that goes on the floor can go on the wall so long as the wall is strong enough
to take the weight. But not the other way round. So you do get some wall tiles that
normally ceramic that are just, but ceramic wall just for walls. Glass for example. Mostly
just for walls. There are some toughened glass ranges you can use on floors and swimming
pools and things like that. The problem is there's just so many tiles that you can normally
find something for any location. The biggest issue is always slip resistance. So obviously
you don't need that for the walls but for the floors we always like to know what areas
you're tiling to make sure you've got the right slip resistance for that area. If it's
a domestic project you can put down anything you like anywhere but we'll always advise you
not put smooth tiles outside for example because if you've got standing water you can slip
over.
Should I mention things like slip ratings, R ratings and pendulum type?
Definitely. So the European slip ratings are the R ratings if you're wearing sheep between
R9 and R13. R9s and 10s are normally your smooth tiles that you would use inside and
R11s and R12s have a texture to them and you'd use them outside or in wet areas. R13 you'll
never need ever. I've in 20 something... I don't know they did have R13. Exactly. But
in over 20 years of selling tiles I've used it once and it was in a fish gutting factory.
Exactly. You need it in a fish gutting factory. Do you get to do lots of interesting jobs?
Wow. So yeah basically R9s and 10s are inside 11s and 12s outside so the R11s and R12s have
a structure to them which will stop you skidding in wet areas and ice or they're dirty. Now
we have the pendulum test which we've had for 7, 8, 9 years. Is that PTV isn't it? PTV.
PTV values. Yeah. So again they're measured for barefoot or shod foot areas in the same
way that the R ratings are. So with the R ratings you've got R9 to R12 anywhere where
you're wearing shoes and the barefoot version which is tested in the same way is A, B or
C. Then you've got the pendulum test either barefoot or shod foot and it's just a rating
between 0 to 150 and pendulum is a portable machine which makes it handy if you ever need
to take one to sight. It's a friction test so an arm kind of swings over a tile, a rubber
stopper on the end of the arm hits about 8 to 10 centimetres of tile and it's the friction
that slows it down and it gives you a number at the end. So anything over 36, so 36 to
150 is classed as a low risk of slipping surface but there are no rules to say what goes where.
And you said there's a shod foot and barefoot. So what's the difference? Obviously barefoot
is barefoot. So if you're turning a kitchen or a... Oh shod, shod as in shoes. Ah, yeah
got it. And then you need different results if you're in the bottom of a shower or a sun
and cool barefoot. And I can say every job is different so we all need to know who the
client is if it's open to the public. If your floors are flat or slopey, how many people
do you expect to go through buildings if you're inside and outside where you're tiling?
Because every project is a bit different. But from my point of view I've got hundreds
of years doing this so I should always be able to help you if anyone has any questions.
So I always struggle with this because... So I generally will over specify because I'm
kind of being cautious. So I always go R11 if I can in a toilet but you don't need that
do you? You only need R10. Exactly. Yeah. In like a commercial toilet. Yes. If you put
an R11 down because you've got the structure it's going to be harder to clean. And if you're
walking on dirt rather than on tiles it's going to be slippery. Even if it's structured
if it's covered in a layer of dirt it will be slippery if it gets wet. So more slippery.
So you don't want to over specify. Okay. I mean this is why I'm doing the podcast because
I can't... I just don't know everything. And I know I don't know everything and I can't
possibly know everything. And I think the best thing for me is whenever I am specifying
I just call the people that I know. So I've been able to call you over a few projects
and go I'm doing this and this one's okay right? And you know and I think that's what's
important to do is just to check with the supplier to make sure that I'm putting this
in here is this going to be all right? No matter if you've spent six months on an interior
design course or seven years training to be an architect both of you will have to deal
with so many different things in your job. You have to choose lighting and soft furnishings
and hard finishes and deal with electrics and heating and ventilator. You've got so
many different things that you have to deal with. If you have a question speak to someone
who has one thing to deal with. Yeah and I remember because I came from a background
of commercial furniture fit out and we used to do a small part of interior design as part
of our pitch to sell furniture and I always I worked with a lot of interior designers
and I always remember kind of going well that I used to go back to people quite a lot and
go well that's not going to work because someone had drawn something and you know I remember
someone did something for Glen Eagle's Hotel that we made and we went back to the diner
and said I know you've spent a lot of time making these drawings but this is going to
be really uncomfortable. So and I always remember thinking when I started the business I decided
that I was always going to collaborate because nobody knows the product better than the people
who are making it and I think that's really important for designers to remember as well
and I think a lot of people kind of go right I've got to know everything. You can't possibly
know everything so you know rely on the people that do know and work with them. So just to
summarize the wall tiles floor tiles outside tiles are ratings and PTB 36 ratings. R9 is
the lowest R number and that one is for internal dry areas that aren't open to the public.
R10. Slightly more texture still going to be smooth for internal dry areas that are open
to the public. R11. Gonna start having a bit more structure so wet areas, external areas
potentially pool surrounds although you'd need the... Took a shower....to go with it.
Bottom of a shower. R11. Yeah. Anywhere where you've got standing water. R12. Basically the
same as R11 it's just a bit more structured. And R13 is for fish gutting factories. There
we go. You probably use it in places like Abattoirs and things like that. I bet they
do stuff like that. Yeah canning factories maybe, food production if they've got... Yeah
I'm sure there's people, architects who specify things like that. I don't think the fish gutting
factory is going to invite me to come in and interior design. But I would love that. I'd
love to do the toilets. There's some really cool fish wallpaper. Brand McKenzie doing
an amazing one which is like a really good toilet wallpaper. I'm waiting to do a fish
restaurant. If there's any fish restaurants out there please, please get in touch with
me because I would love to interior design your toilets. Just saying. Putting out to
the universe. So... Do you want me to talk a bit about how tiles are made and some innovations?
Yes I'd love that. Yeah so we've obviously talked about the tiles are made spraying all
the raw ingredients into moulds or rolling them out in giant sheets. But a lot of the
factories now are becoming a bit more sustainably minded and a bit more eco-focused. We work
with one factory who are B Corp certified which is great. Can you explain what B Corp
certified means? I can try. Sorry. B Corp is kind of a holistic approach to generally
being a really nice company so it doesn't just look at what you make or how you make
it or where you buy your raw ingredients from. It looks at whether you recycle your rubbish,
how you produce your energy, how many women or older people you employ, what you do for
your local community. So one of the largest Italian factories that we work with is a company
called Florium in Italy. They have an enormous facility over in Italy. They have great big
auditorium in the middle of their building for exhibition and things like that. Wow.
They give that space over to local schools and universities to use. They provide buses
so their staff can get to work without having to drive. They produce all their own electricity
obviously because they've got pro-terial tape. Panels on the roofs and the roofs are massive
and any excess energy they give to the local community. So it's things like that that tick
B Corp boxes and there's something ridiculous like 140 different boxes you've got to try
and tick to achieve B Corp status. So very few people have got it. We've got two trial
manufacturers that we work with who have B Corp. They must be big companies aren't they?
It's actually weirdly easier for a small company to become B Corp than it is for a big company
because you have less involvement with outside resources and other things going on. So if
it was you and you had more control, yeah, if you did something like a mini wind turbine
or photovoltaic panels to make your own energy and you had some recycling bins it would probably
be easier for you to get B Corp. I just assumed that it would be like the big corporations
that would have the time to be able to do the exercise. Well, yeah, there is definitely
time involved in doing the exercise but yeah, when you have thousands of employees it's
a bit harder to... Interesting.
...to use those mini boxes. So the previous episode that we had on the
Interior Design podcast with Hannah Tempore about regenerative interior design, we were
talking about all of this and sort of how do you know? Like how do you know if it's
a good product to specify? Like there's so many things. So B Corp sounds like it's a
good regulation to be following. And it sounds like that sort of thing will probably grow.
Yes, and there is a European equivalent called E-MOS which is... Oh no, sorry not E-MOS,
there's so many certification. ECOvardus is a European holistic approach to looking at
companies as a whole. So a lot of our factories have ECOvardus as well. But we also speak
to them all about whether they've got ISO certification. So ISO would cover sustainability
as well, would it? ISO is more to do with internal processes within companies.
I thought it was a quality thing. Is it more quality? Yeah. Yeah, quality control.
I sell tiles Haley. I know, but I'm a geek, I just want to know everything. What I'll
do is put some show notes in of these companies that we're talking about, the ISO and the
B Corp and just make sure that there's a link in there. But the big one these days is EPD.
EPDs? So EPD is the environmental product declaration. It's basically an identity card
for whatever you're buying, whether it's a carpet or a table or a light fitting or a
tile. Anyone that produces a product that you can buy should be able to give you an
EPD. It's an independently assessed certification. So an independent assessor has to go to a
factory or a group of factories. There are three different levels of EPD, which I'll
tell you about. And independently assess that company to trace where their raw materials
are coming from and the carbon footprint of the production and transport of those raw
materials. And in our case, where the raw materials are dug up from and shipped to the
factory, the carbon footprint involved in firing our tiles. And then there's a section
on the carbon footprint for getting those tiles from the factory to the site, which
is always a bit of a difficult one. Sites move all over the place. And then there'll
be a carbon footprint for installing that product. So if it's a table, carbon footprint
or blizzero because there's no installation carbon produced, if it's a tile, you've got
adhesive and grouts and those things have carbon footprints. And then there's the other
side of it where cleaning and maintenance and ongoing looking after of a product that
will also have a carbon footprint. So carpet has a higher carbon footprint for its ongoing
life than a tile does because you need to steam clean or use chemicals or detergents
to clean products electricity and electricity. Exactly. You've got a Hoover. Obviously, assuming
everyone has got a Hoover. That's true. And also the afterlife of a product. So when
you've taken your carpet up, whether it's recycled, whether it's burnt, what carbon
footprint of that would be and what you do with your tiles, most tiles end up as aggregate
and hardcore. Because when you take them up, they bring half the flooring, the adhesive
and with them and you can't separate that out. So they ended up coming hardcore. So there
is an afterlife, but there's not a cradle to cradle. There are two for any tiles. There
are two companies in the world who have cradle to cradle certification. And it is not possible
at the moment. No one has the facilities to clean off those tiles and send them all the
way back to Italy. I mean, the carbon footprint involved in that is pointless. So they are
crushed up and used for aggregate. And 93% of all tiles that come out of building sites
are reused as hardcore. So they do have an afterlife. They won't go into the ground,
they won't leach anything, they won't produce VACs or anything like that, but they'll go
on and do something. Carpet, obviously, 75% of carpet that's taken up is burnt for fuel,
which is not nice.
Yes, there's so many, there's so much. I kind of talk about this a lot. I want there to
be a regulation that can just everyone has to do by 2027 or something or whatever that
everyone has to be there. And if they're, you know, it's really difficult to specify.
To Parliament in 2022 requiring contractors and architects to design and build to minimum
carbon footprints. But it was stalled in Parliament at the second reading last year because the
government were worried that if they made it law, which they all want to and should
do and would be sensible to do, but they were worried that if they made it law, it would
put building costs up.
It's going to, yeah.
But then government did not want to start putting any costs up for anyone. So it all
got stalled in Parliament and nothing's happening with it.
Yeah, I think that's the trouble, isn't it? No one can bite the bullet and be the bad
guy on it.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Joe, you're so knowledgeable. I love all the things that you know. It's great.
Thank you.
So in terms of supply chain, how does that work with what you do? So you work for Solus
ceramics.
I do, yes.
And you stock in the UK?
Not a huge amount. The interesting thing about working at Solus is we work in all sorts
of different sectors. So there'll be corporate clients that we stock tiles for and bits and
pieces that we keep in stock in the UK, but generally everything comes into order. So
it takes about three weeks.
We work with 250 factories, something ridiculous like that. Almost all of them are based in
Central Europe. So to ship their tiles from there to us, we go over with lorries, fill
them up to the brim and then drive them back. So normally it takes about two weeks. August,
the factories tend to shut down.
All of Europe shuts down except the UK, doesn't it?
So we need a holiday in Europe.
That takes longer then.
Hint, hint government.
Yes, that would be lovely.
I feel like I'm talking to the government and they're not probably not listening.
They're not listening to us.
We actually now have two factories that we work with who are based in the UK producing
products, tiles in the UK, which is just lovely. So we work with a quarry tile manufacturer
who's based in West Midlands about 10 miles from our head office, who produce beautiful
quarry tiles.
And now we work with a Manchester based Terratso manufacturer who are making a range of Terratso
tiles for.
Oh, Terratso is really on trend at the moment, isn't it?
It is, yeah.
I did read somewhere the other day that Terratso is on the way out already.
Really?
So yeah, they just come back.
I know, right?
Yeah, it's lovely. The nicest thing about the ones we have made in Manchester is that
they try to source their raw materials locally. So you've got English limestones, Scotland
produce marbles, which I didn't know, but you can get marble from Scotland.
Wales obviously for slate.
They also team up with the guys in the West Midlands at the quarry tile manufacturers and
take broken quarry tiles and can put them in.
But we can also take building waste from building sites.
So old glass, old bricks, old marble that's coming out of the building site instead of
going into landfill or being used as hardcore, we can take it, clean it and put it into Terratso
tiles that can then go back to site when it's big.
That's a reason to use Terratso, isn't it?
Because it's all Terratso tiles recycled.
No, no.
Originally, back in Roman times probably, they mixed the cement that they were building
with with broken marble chips.
So it was a way of using leftovers and offcuts and broken stuff.
And then as with all things, when it becomes popular, you have to start breaking the marble
to make them all Terratso.
Yeah, there's always going to be a certain amount of breakages and offcuts that end up
in the Terratso tiles.
So there is a recycle content, but those original marble chips that end up in the Terratso
tiles weren't necessarily used before.
So they would be pre-consumer, not post-consumer recycle content.
At least now, yeah, we've got the ability to put actual recycle content into tiles.
So basically anything inert, you can put nuts and bolts and screws in.
We've done a project where they put marbles in the tiles and then polygum up and they
look...
You're talking about Terratso tiles, so you're not talking about porcelain or ceramic.
These are actual Terratso...
They're made with cement.
So how's it made?
Okay, so literally looks like a cake mix.
They mix cement and water and aggregates, whatever it is that's going into it, mix it all together.
So all those chips would go all the way through, they're not just on the surface.
Put it into molds and cure it.
So with making porcelain or ceramic, it's the firing process.
So the majority of the carbon footprint is in the fossil fuels used to fire the tiles.
With cement, most of the carbon footprint is in the production of the cement.
And then once they've made the tiles, they're just left to cure.
To just dry out.
It's a chemical process.
And I am not a chemist.
They cure.
Let's leave it at that.
They cure with chemicals.
Yeah, it takes a few weeks for them to cure properly and you don't want to ship Terratso
tiles when they're still wet because they can't walk.
So always Terratso tiles will be on a 10-12 week lead time, even if it's made in the UK.
Do they not make it in sheets and stock it?
Anything.
Some do.
Normally they're made in blocks.
Like natural stodas quarried in big cubes.
They make Terratso in blocks and then cut them so that...
Bit like a slice of bread.
Yes.
That way you can have a 20mm thick or a 30mm or a 50mm and it's all cut to order and then
you can cut your sheets into 30mm thick.
It's like having lots of cakes, isn't it?
Yeah.
Lots of cakes that you're just sitting in there and then you cut it when you want to take
one off.
I'm talking about cake.
Do you want some cake?
We should have got cake.
Always were our podcast.
Yeah.
Next time.
Tea and biscuits.
Yeah.
Why didn't we get cake?
I'm so sorry.
So how are porcelain tiles made?
You said about fire.
Porcelain and ceramic made in the same way.
Yeah, they're all still fired in big long kilns.
It's just that a ceramic tile is basically just clay.
It's not fired at such high temperatures and then it's glazed over the top.
With porcelain tiles there, they grind through all materials.
I've been to really fine crowned it room, so press it into moulds or roll it out into
sheets.
Sometimes they're the same colour all the way through, whether they're kind of stony-looking
or plain colours.
Sometimes they're glazed and printed on the surface, but it's glazed in porcelain, on
porcelain so it won't wear off all your marble veins and wood effects and metallic effects.
They're all a print surface.
The glaze has gone on top of the tile and then it's fired.
How thick is that glaze in?
Is it really thin?
It's really thin.
Yeah.
Yeah, really thin.
So if you hit it with a hammer and you're unlucky enough to chip the surface, ideally
you want on a glazed porcelain tile, you want the body of the tile to be as similar in colour
to what's going on on the surface so that you wouldn't really notice it, but hitting
and breaking a porcelain tile is really hard, they're really dense.
It's easier to break a ceramic tile.
So in terms of what's the composition, so a ceramic and porcelain tiles are made in
the same way, but just from different materials?
Yes.
So ceramic is obviously more traditional and less ingredients go into it.
With porcelain, they've been tweaked and refined over the years.
To make it better.
To make it stronger.
Yeah.
So you've got felt spa, you've got sand, got different pigments, you've got porcelain.
So basically ceramic is like the old fashioned way of doing it and porcelain is like the
evolved.
It's a bit more, yeah, a bit more advanced.
Definitely.
That's interesting.
But don't tell the ceramic manufacturer is that.
Because they definitely do produce beautiful, lovely things.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's easier to get patterns and pictures and things.
If you want designed tiles like drawings or pictures or stuff printed onto tiles and
we'll print them onto a ceramic tile because it's easier to do.
Okay.
It's easier to print onto a ceramic than porcelain because porcelain is harder and has to cure.
No, it doesn't have to cure.
Fire, be fired.
They would both have to be fully.
Honestly, because printing onto tiles has been around for so long, you can imagine all
the Moroccan blues and whites and all the pictures and stuff.
Everyone's been putting pictures and designs onto tiles for a long time.
And traditionally they've always gone on to ceramic tiles.
So although I could get a porcelain tile manufacturer to produce a bespoke tile, they
just want thousands and thousands of square meters to bother to retool and do it.
Whereas ceramic manufacturers, because they, that's what they do all day, every day, it's
much easier to tweak a production line and grow in a few bespoke tiles.
And you can make smaller quantities quicker.
Oh, okay.
It's interesting.
How do you choose the right tile for different spaces like bathrooms, kitchen, living areas,
commercial?
Where do we, what's your advice on that?
First, we have to split it up between whether it's residential or commercial and whether
it's walls or floors.
So if you're doing a residential project, you can in theory use anything you like.
I mean, when I moved into my house, we have polished, shiny tiles on the bathroom floor,
which are incredibly slippery and you'd never recommend it.
But if it's your own home, you really can do whatever you like.
As designers or suppliers, it's our job to recommend not to put shiny tiles around swimming
pools or in the bottom of a shower, but honestly, for residential, there are no rules.
For commercial, we will need to know if it's open to the public.
So you have to have that magic.
He TV plus 36.
It really comes down to slit resistance and aesthetics and design, so you know, how you
want it to look, how your client wants it to look.
And then it comes down to people like me finding the right slit resistance for the certain
areas that you're tightening.
So it always used to be that male and female toilets, floors, for example, could be an R9,
but disabled had to be an R10.
I think that probably still says that in the R rating rules, but they're ancient.
And now we obviously have the PTV rules as well.
So if it's open to the public, we just say R10 plus 36 because it's the safest thing
for everything internal and dry.
I love that you do R and PTV.
Some people do R and some people do PTV.
Okay.
Legally, you have to have the PTV ratings open to the public.
Yeah.
If someone slips over in a shopping center floor and you can't say it's an R10, it should
be fine.
And you have to have the PTV rating legally.
But the PTV rating has no rules as to what goes where.
Is that legally in the UK?
Yeah.
Because is that in Europe as well?
No, only the UK.
Okay.
And what about the US?
The US uses the ASTM standard or the turtle test, which is a little machine that moves
over the tile or the wood or whatever your surface is.
And it measures resistance.
It's got little pins inside that measure resistance.
And it's called the turtle test.
The turtle test.
Tortoise test.
Because the shape of the machine, I think.
Cool.
It's the ASTM test.
And because the American market is huge, all the European manufacturers, they'll test the
R rating and they'll test the ASTM and give you certificates.
Because the British market is quite small, we tend to do all our pendulum testing in
the UK.
That way we can also guarantee that it's done properly.
So when you pendulum test a tile, you have to pendulum test it horizontally, vertically
and diagonally eight times each way in the wet and in the dry.
And when you do, no one slips over in the dry, so you don't really ever need the dry
pendulum test results.
But the barefoot or the shod foot wet result is what you need.
Every single time you swing the pendulum, you are then supposed to get it wet again.
And we have found that some of the European factories didn't quite realise that.
So as the pendulum got drier, their results got better.
So we do all of our pendulum testing in-house.
I know how to pendulum test, but I'm not allowed to.
Our pendulum testers are certified.
They go away every year and get their training assessed.
The machines are sent away every year and recalibrated.
So it's all a legal requirement that we do not exit up.
Is that just for tiles that all flooring?
I'm sure I had a conversation with someone the other day and they said, oh, we haven't
got the pendulum test, only the R.
Well, the R ratings have been around forever.
When you get your products, they come with the R ratings.
Yeah.
Because factories do them.
If you imagine a range of tiles that has 10 or eight colours, every single time they
produce them, they'll always be the same R rating.
Every batch of every colour of every tile ever produced will have a different pendulum test
rating result.
So if you say it's going in a public area, I can give you stuff that consistently gets
over 36 or over 40 to be safe.
But you can batch test specific batches of tiles.
So 36 would be for what areas?
That's the problem with the pendulum test.
There's no instructions that say what goes where.
So 36 to 150 is a massive range.
I have very smooth R9 tiles that consistently get over 36 on the pendulum.
I've had one guy years ago now who tried to put smooth tiles around a swimming pool and
we said to you, you can't, they're smooth.
And he said, but it's plus 36.
They're fine.
So they really aren't.
You have to use common sense.
That's why we always do R ratings.
I was going to say, yeah, a lot of people do both, don't they?
Definitely.
Because the R ratings are sensible and there's a list of instructions that say, if you're
doing this, use that.
So as an interior designer, you would have to make a judgment on that for where you're
putting it.
And that would be that the owners would be on you, wouldn't it?
Yeah.
Really, not on the manufacturer.
Yeah, it stands on you and your client, what you specify.
We can only advise you.
With the case of the guy who wanted smooth tiles around a swimming pool, I refused to
supply him.
Really?
But that's about the end.
Yeah.
Not often, very often, but that was kind of dangerous.
So I can advise you, but ultimately what you put down is up to you and your client.
If it's open to the public, you really do need to have plus 36 on the pendulum.
But yeah, if it's outside, everything's going to be plus 36.
So yeah, you need to have the R ratings as well because they're sensible.
Current trends in tile design.
This is such a difficult one to answer.
Patterns, colors and the textures.
It's such a difficult one to answer because everyone's views and opinions differ so much.
I can tell you that since COVID, I have a theory that during COVID, where we were all
at home and our homes are lovely and soft and cozy and colorful and they're not gray
boxes.
So since COVID, we've had a lot more requests for colorful tiles and more natural tones.
So terracotta's, warmer browns and greens.
Yeah, lots of, there's lots more biofilling projects happening.
People putting plants into their buildings.
So green is very popular at the moment and terracotta is really popular.
So we went to the Dulux Awards.
Yeah, you sang color from the year.
I keep saying awards because I did the awards last year.
The Dulux launch, the global launch for their color of the year 2025.
And it was called a color called True Joy, which is very similar to these cushions.
So I was quite chuffed because I was like, oh, you're a trendsetter.
You're a head of the plant.
Started that.
And we ordered these cushions for the HRC last year.
But yeah, True Joy, and it's a beautiful, fun, uplifting color, but all the palettes
that they did.
And if anyone's interested to learn more about this, there's a reel on my social media of
the event the other night with the palettes on it.
And I'm actually going to ask my rep at Dulux to send me all the little paint pots and just
do a little thing on the wall with it because the palettes are so different because this
color can be used with other colors of the same tone or it can be used with really earthy
colors.
It's so versatile.
And yeah, a lot of them were what you've just described, terracotta, really kind of
natural colors and things like that.
I mean, not to do ourselves out of sales, but from a sustainability point of view, we always
tell people to design commercial projects or big projects, design neutral.
And then when you want color and warmth, bring that in in fabric, furniture, things that
can be reupholstered, rugs that can be moved around and replaced.
Anything that's permanent and going to stay glued to the walls or the floors, it makes
sense to go neutral and inoffensive.
Base.
Yes, definitely.
Because a gray floor tile or a white floor tile will go with your True Joy yellow.
True Joy.
The event was so inspiring.
It was just brilliant.
What they're saying is that we're taking a leap next year.
Like we've had COVID, we've had all these tough times over the last few years with Brexit
and everyone's struggling with the costs of living.
Everyone's been quite cautious.
You really do need some True Joy in our life.
Yeah, and it's like taking a leap and it's about taking a leap into next year and actually
people are going to start taking more risks and being more bright and bold is the theory.
So yeah, I was going, oh, it's so good.
I mean, I do sell yellow tiles, but yeah.
Great.
We'll see them.
We're going to do a little video after this on YouTube about the tiles because Jo's very
lovely people who can hear this, can't see this, but she's sitting next to a really cool
board and Jo is my kind of person because she's done all of these mood boards from the
tiles of her range and they just look brilliant.
So I really want to show our following on YouTube.
So we'll do a little video next.
Yes, we're going to do that.
So watch out for that.
So trends, what else is trendy?
We talked about terracotta.
I mean, I don't think terracotta is going anywhere.
I think not terracotta, sorry.
We talked about terrazzo.
I don't think it's going anywhere.
You're right with both actually.
I mean, real terracotta and real terrazzo have been around forever.
They're always going to be around.
I'm sure Tesco's and all the supermarkets use terrazzo on their floors.
I'm weirdly witting lots of distilleries and wineries using real terracotta.
We're working on a project called Wesley Park Garden Centre at the moment for their restaurant.
It's like a 300 seater restaurant.
And I was with Hannah yesterday.
We were designing it and she was helping me sort of order fabrics and things.
And I was saying what we're trying to achieve is a base.
We're using the pattern fabrics and the stuff that's going to go out of fashion in a few
years on cushions.
Which will get worn and therefore need replacing anyway.
Exactly.
Real holstering anyway.
They'll get pinched or whatever.
So in the commercial.
The base build for the background of the building.
So the base of the design is all like browns and greens and dark kind of rich colours.
And then we've got wallpaper on the wall behind the fixed seating which could be redecorated
for example.
But the redecoration will probably happen way ahead of the re-upholstery.
So we've used materials on the upholstery that are 100,000 plus rubs.
So it looks like a faux leather that we've used a lot in different tones of different.
But it's all very kind of neutral.
It's like browns and tans and dark greens and things like that.
And then we're going to put the table tops in.
I think it's going to be a tile top.
Okay.
There's one of our suppliers has just started doing a range of tiled table tops with brass
edges.
It's awesome.
Yeah.
Probably use something like that.
And then like on the chairs we're going to use like I think we're going to do pops of
colour.
So we're going to do five or six chairs in yellow.
Yes.
We were trying to get yellow into it yesterday.
And like we've got to get yellow into this scheme.
It's like asking for it, especially after finding out about the colour of the year next
year.
So yeah.
So we've gone like, I think we've only got eight chairs in the whole scheme of 300 seats
that are bright yellow, but they're going to be standing out.
So you might not like those in a few years, but there's only eight of them, you know?
So it's that kind of way of designing, isn't it?
That's how to be sustainable.
If it's permanent and stuck down, then neutral is sensible.
And yeah, bring in the colour and chairs that can be repainted and reupholstered.
We've got some of your tiles in there.
I've got the green tiles.
Lovely.
I'm going to stack.
Yeah, nice.
Is it called stack bond?
Stack?
Yes.
Stack bond when you put them on top of each other.
Yeah.
Stack bond.
I suppose it's like it.
Love, love.
Sustainable and eco-friendly tile options.
What advice have you got around that?
Well, we've kind of covered sustainable design.
Obviously, if it's if it's glued down, it's more sustainable to be neutral so that it
lasts forever.
I mean, if you're designing a new building, if you put carpet in one area and tile in
another area in 10 years time, when someone new comes in, they tend to change but stick
with the same type.
So if it's carpet first, it always is carpet in every reiteration.
And if it's tile, it always stays tile.
But if it's going to be stuck down, the most sustainable thing is to keep it as neutral
as possible so that it doesn't offend anyone and can stay for as long as possible.
When you talk about sustainability and manufacturer, we've obviously got the EPD paperwork now
from almost all of our manufacturers.
That's all we were going to do.
It's going to explain the different types of EPDs to you.
Oh.
After talking about it.
Cool.
So this EPD is the environmental product declaration, the identity card of any product.
It's quite expensive to do because they're independently assessed.
You're looking at between 6 and 10,000 euros to be independently assessed to get an EPD
and it can take a bit of time.
But I would urge all designers to audit their suppliers and get as many EPDs as they can.
EPDs.
Yeah.
Environmental product declaration.
It will give you the carbon footprint of everything.
So if rules come into place, at the moment it's all voluntary to build buildings to maximum
carbon footprints per square meter.
If it becomes compulsory, then you will need all this.
But at the moment it's voluntary, so it's advisable to have all this and try and be
as good friends as possible and keep the carbon footprints down.
So you get three different types of EPD and Breanne will give you points depending upon
how good your EPD is.
A lot of the smaller factories have clubbed together and been assessed as a group and
that's called an industry-wide EPD.
So it could be 10 or 12.
Yeah.
If you're all a bit smaller, don't want to fork out all that money clubbed together.
So it does give you useful information.
It is a useful thing.
It's just not as detailed as some of the others.
And then you've got a factory EPD where the assessors will look at a factory as a whole
and all their production lines, which is obviously much more focused and relevant.
And then some factories, very few, have forked out to do an EPD for every single range that
they do.
So it's really important, but obviously the most accurate information of all generally
tiles have a carbon footprint of about 10 kilograms of carbon per square meter.
So that is 10 kilograms of carbon are produced when making a square meter of tiles.
That can be hanging around in the atmosphere for 100 years.
So we need trees and grasses and seaweeds and things to absorb the carbon dioxide.
But we're obviously as a species producing more carbon than there are enough trees and
things to remove, which is why we've got the greenhouse effect.
So we need to reduce as much carbon as possible.
Some of our factories are doing carbon offsetting.
Now tree planting is great, but you don't plant trees.
You plant saplings and it'll take 10 years before a tree is actually absorbing enough
carbon to make it useful.
So tree planting offsetting and schemes are a bit misleading.
They're not going to be offsetting for years and years.
Technologies that absorb carbon and sink it and lock it up into the ground so it can't
be in the atmosphere.
Technologies that take coal producing power plants out and replace them with wind or
solar, that kind of thing.
So technological advances that actually do some good.
So we do have factories doing lovely things like that.
Yeah, we've got sustainable production and sustainable design.
Is there certain ranges in your products that are more sustainable than others?
Yes.
I mean, it does tend to be the bigger factories who have got more money and can afford to do
better things.
So we work with teeny tiny factories who produce handmade tiles occasionally and produce terracotta
tiles and things like that.
And they can't be bothered, will not spend the money, will never get any PD.
And then we work with giant enormous factories who have solar panels on every roof and wind
turbines and the car parks.
One factory built their own lake so they don't pick water from the local community, got their
own water supply and they are ready so they don't take it away from the local community.
Obviously water.
So do they do they recycle that water in the same way as it does it get used and used?
Yes.
Yeah.
And obviously topped up from the rain, but it also means that when they get round to
moving over to green hydrogen manufacturer, they've got the water there ready to split
it into hydrogen.
So what does green hydrogen manufacturer mean?
So firing at the moment when you fire tiles, you use fossil fuels, you use gas.
So that was obviously an issue with the Russian gas thing.
But yeah, they've stabilized supply since then.
So it is fossil fuels that fire tiles.
If you can take out some of that fossil fuel energy and replace it with hydrogen, that's
great.
There are different types of hydrogen, not my area of expertise.
But when we talk about green hydrogen, it means the hydrogens come from water.
So it's water powered.
Yes.
Yeah.
And clever buffins, split the atom and then use the hydrogen and what's left over is steam,
which is obviously inert and not going to cause anything else.
But hydrogen kills the different shapes to normal kilns.
Hydrogen is odourless and colourless.
And if you have a leak, you don't know.
So you have to have special storage tanks that are double lined.
You have to have sensors everywhere to see if you're leaking it.
It's more, it sounds more expensive to do it that way.
Initially like to set up the pipes to move it a different shaped pipe or sized pipes
to the pipe you would need to move gas.
Everything had to be started from scratch.
So very few people have the money and the time and the space to do that.
And if you go to Italy, the main tile manufacturing region, and you drive down the street, it
is tile factory, tile factory.
That's all there is next to each other.
There's no space to expand.
The only way to expand is to buy your neighbour and become a big group.
So that, you know, that does happen.
But yes, people are sort of having to move further outtown to get space, start again
and build new production plants.
That's a huge process.
How much of the British, how much of the tile industry is doing that?
Is what would you say?
Fraction, it's tiny.
Yeah.
I mean, we have the leading manufacturer moving over to green hydrogen.
Is that about 7% production now?
It's a start.
Yeah.
It's absolutely better than nothing.
And the tiles coming out of that production line much more expensive than...
No.
Are they not?
No.
They're not the price of the tiles.
I suppose it's the initial set up, isn't it?
It's not the ongoing cost.
It's getting the kills.
Fendicing the ongoing cost should be less because water is cheaper than gas.
Absolutely.
Yeah, I don't know.
So three.
Oh, it's got two, hasn't it?
It's got two.
Right, down.
Fingers crossed.
Come on, come on factories.
Get hydrogen.
Yeah, the hydrogen is a great step forward.
Yeah.
I think talking to Hannah Temple the other week, she's a member of the Green Cross.
Green Party and she was talking about governments and everything else.
They've had a really successful election.
I know that they've only had four people as members of parliament, but the actual percentage
of people who voted green was a real statement to the government to say, look, you really
need to do something about this now because the Green Party might not get into power because
they haven't got the seats in each area, but they've upped their percentages so much.
Yeah, it's a really important topic for a lot of people.
Yeah, if we want to carry on living on this planet as human beings, we've got to do something,
haven't we, at some point?
So practical tips and advice.
Maintenance tips.
Have you got any maintenance tips for tiles?
Honestly, the nicest thing about tiles is they're really dense, so they're very unlikely
to stay.
Because they're fired at such high temperatures, all the raw ingredients that go into them
fuse together.
They're called vitrification, which is just like glass, basically.
It's seamless.
All the molecules join together so you can't get anything into a tile.
You can't stain a tile, which means they're really easy to look after.
So it's just about finding the right way to clean a tile if you've got it stained, but
most tiles, you just clean them with something pH neutral like FlashExcel if you're at home,
that kind of thing, or the commercial equivalent.
So you can use a lot of different detergents and anti-bat sprays and things.
You can't bleach.
You can leave bleach on it.
You can leave acid on it.
I've seen people leave tiles in brick acid to see what will happen to them, and they
just don't dissolve.
They'll last forever.
So basically, your everyday cleaning and maintenance of tiles is just something pH neutral in water,
a bit of detergent if you've got dirty tiles, but basically they're really easy to look
after if you are struggling to clean tiles.
99 times out of 100, it's early on in the build process, and it's because there's grout
and residue from the adhesive left on the surface of the tiles.
You can scrub it and it looks like it's gone, but if it's still there, it acts like a key
and holds onto dirt.
So it makes the floor look dirty.
I think that's a key thing to look for as an interior designer, isn't it?
Once the tiler has been in to make sure that they've cleaned up the tiles afterwards so
you don't have a problem with it further down the line.
All the builders clean.
You have to make sure your tiler or your builder does a builders clean.
With tiles, that means you clean them with an acid watered down acid solution, and the
acid dissolves grout on the surface of the tiles.
You can clean the tiles with acid every day and you'd never hurt them, but eventually
you'd erode the grout joints, which is why you use something pH neutral.
But builders clean definitely.
Do that.
Get rid of all the grout and builders muck and adhesive that's on the surface of the
tiles and go back to a nice clean tile and then after that, daily cleaning or whatever
maintenance, it's just something pH neutral.
Broom and heave.
We don't like mobs.
Mobs move dirty water around.
Okay.
Waking up the dirt stays behind.
Broom and heave.
Yeah.
What about wet?
Would you not wet?
Use a wet something?
If you need to scrub the floors and wash the floors, we recommend the two bucket method.
So one bucket of water with your cleaning detergent and a stiff bristled broom and then a bucket
of clean water and a mop.
So clean it all away.
Great.
It's the scrubbing.
The two bucket method.
The scrubbing action of the broom that will activate the cleaning chemicals to lift the
dirt off and then clean mop and water to take it away.
Love that.
I'm such a cleaner.
I love that.
I'm going to buy another bucket.
And a stiff bristle.
Uh-oh.
She's come out.
Sorry.
Okay.
Right.
What was she doing?
Help.
We need to get to the end now because otherwise we'll just give...
So we've talked about types of tiles, ceramic, porcelain, glass, stone and encore stick.
Is that how you say it?
I said this before.
Encore stick.
And we've talked about to RACSO.
We talked about to RACSO.
Yes, we did.
We talked about the differences between wall tiles, floor tiles and outdoor tiles.
All the slit ratings and how we can specify those and we just need to be very mindful
of making sure we've got the right thing in the right place and not to over specify because
then it could be a problem for cleaning.
We talked about trends.
We talked about sustainer and eco-friendly tiling options and innovation in tile manufacturing.
We talked about maintenance tips.
I didn't know that acid one.
I think that's brilliant.
I'll look out for that one for the builders.
The only thing...
I knew what I was going to ask you.
Grout.
Yes.
So I've always found after a few years, white grout doesn't say white.
What's your recommendations around grout?
Honestly, grout will end up grey.
Just use grey grout.
Yeah, you can get white grouts.
You can get colourful grouts.
But grout is a cementitious product.
It's porous, isn't it?
Porous.
Can you seal it?
Grout joints are only two or three millimetres wide generally.
So I have seen a product that you...
Someone's like a pen that you draw a sealant over it.
But God, that would take days on a project.
So no.
Normal cementitious grout is not as porous as it used to be.
The new stuff, you're looking at about 4% porosity.
When I started, they were 23% porosity.
Right.
So it's got better.
It is a lot better.
You can also get epoxy grouts.
So when I started doing this epoxy grout, it was horrible, smelly, nasty, difficult to
work with.
You had to wear a hazmat suit and ventilate the area.
Now it's no longer...
I've got a vision of you in a hazmat suit now.
Oh, we're going to time.
I know, but I'd just say it just kept popped into my head.
So yeah, epoxy grouts are easier to work with, but a lot more expensive.
You don't really want them in swimming pool or in a commercial kitchen.
Normal cementitious grout, we use everywhere.
It is going to absorb water, so it will change colour.
The only ways around that are to...
I don't know, depends on the project, every three years or 10 years, acid wash the floor.
The whole floor, good clean, like a builder's clean.
And that will take the very top layer of the grout off and give you back the colour.
What about bleaching?
Can you bleach it?
It won't get rid of the dirt.
Really?
No.
If anything, it would die yellow.
Yeah.
I mean, you'd have to leave bleach on it onto a white grout, possibly to dye it.
Yeah.
Okay, good tip.
Thank you.
Yeah.
It's basically just dirt, isn't it?
You can't bleach.
No.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
That was amazing.
Thank you so much, Jo.
You are such a mindful of knowledge.
It's so nice to be with you.
Yeah, thank you.
It's amazing.
Thank you so much for educating our listeners.
You're very welcome.
I'm always here if you have questions, if you need anything.
Thank you so much for being here.
So Harvey's joined us.
Little monkey.
Look, he's got a proper poodle tail now.
Oh, goodness.
Have a look on YouTube if you want to see Harvey.
He's beautiful.
He's just been groomed.
Thanks for joining us on the Interior Design Podcast.
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