CHOOSING TILES IN PERSON
What an hour in the Moira showroom actually tells you
Most tile projects begin on a phone. A photograph of a floor, saved from somewhere, in a room that is not yours, lit by a sun that does not fall the way yours does. It is a good place to start and a poor place to decide.
We have been selling tiles across Northern Ireland for more than thirty years, first from a shop in Hamiltonsbawn and, since 2007, from the showroom at Moira. In that time the thing that has changed least is how much difference it makes to stand in front of the material before you commit to it.
THE SAMPLE PROBLEM
One tile tells you almost nothing about a floor.
Tiles are laid in repeats. The character of a finished floor comes from how that repeat behaves across a room, not from how one piece looks in your hand.
Marble-effect porcelain is the clearest case. On a single tile it can look convincing. Across twenty square metres it either reads as stone or as the same photograph printed twenty times, depending on how many face variations the range carries. No product page can show you that.
LIGHT, FINISH, SCALE
A tile never looks the same twice.
Light. Northern Irish daylight is soft and grey for much of the year. A warm cream that looks generous under showroom spotlights can turn flat in a north-facing bathroom. Carry a tile from a bright part of the floor to a darker one and watch what happens to it.
Finish. Matt, satin, polished and textured are not styles, they are behaviours. Polished throws light around and makes a small room feel larger. It also shows every footprint. Textured gives grip. None of that comes through a screen.
Scale. Fewer grout lines read as a calmer surface, which is why large format has changed how bathrooms are laid. A big tile on an uneven floor is a difficult job, and that is better learned now than later.
Bring the constraints, not a scheme.
The visits that go well are the ones where somebody arrives with a few plain facts rather than a fixed idea. Floor area and wall area, roughly, in metres. It does not need to be exact, it needs to exist, because it decides which ranges are worth showing you at all.
Bring a photograph of the room as it is now. Not the room you want. Where the window sits, which way the door swings, what the floor is made of, what has to stay. Bring anything already decided too: a worktop offcut, a paint card, a handle from a kitchen door. Tiles are almost never the first decision in a room, and matching to what exists is easier than matching from memory.
The question worth asking is not which tile is best. It is which of these will still be right in eight years, with your family walking on it.
How an hour in the showroom goes.
You tell us the room
Size, light, use, and who walks on it. That is the whole brief, and it takes about five minutes.
We narrow it down
From the full range to a handful that suit the room. Fewer choices, better ones. This is the part that is hard to do alone.
You see it at scale
Full displays rather than single samples, so you can read the repeat and the finish before you decide.
We work out quantities
Area plus a cutting allowance, checked against stock, so the order that leaves is the order that finishes the job.
SEEING IT ASSEMBLED
A basin is a shape on a website. In a room it is a height.
The Moira showroom is one of the largest of its kind in Northern Ireland, and not for floor space alone. Tiles and bathrooms have to be seen assembled.
There are more than 160 basins and countertops in the range and nearly fifty vanity units. The useful question is never which basin is nicest. It is whether that basin, on that unit, at that height, still leaves you room to open the door.
BATHROOMS
Every bathroom choice is bounded by plumbing that is already there.
Bathrooms are the hardest rooms to imagine and the easiest to get wrong. Full displays let you test the awkward parts early: the swing of a door against a vanity, the height of a basin for the people who will actually use it, whether a tall unit closes the room off or tidies it.
If the room is being reworked rather than refreshed, our design service lays it out properly before anything is ordered.
Room sets, sample walls and tile at full scale.
INSIDE THE SHOWROOM
Bathrooms built out complete, large format standing upright where you can see a whole tile, and the sample wall where most of the narrowing down actually happens.
FROM SHOWROOM TO FITTED FLOOR
Quantities decide whether the job runs smoothly.
Order enough. Every tiled floor needs a cutting allowance, and more where the tile is laid diagonally or the room has a lot of edges. Running short means a second order, and a second order can mean a different batch, which can mean a visible shift in shade across a floor.
Keep a few spare tiles when the job is finished. A cracked tile in four years is a twenty minute repair if you have a match, and a much larger conversation if you do not. And if your fitter has a start date, tell us while you are choosing rather than when you are ordering. It changes what we recommend.
The questions we are asked most.
Can I take a tile home to look at it?
Yes, and you should. Light is the one variable a showroom cannot control for. Put it on the floor of the room it is destined for, look at it in the morning and again in the evening, and look at it next to whatever it has to live with.
How much extra should I order?
Enough to cover cuts and waste, and more where the room is complicated or the tile is laid at an angle. Tell us the room and we will work the allowance out with you rather than leave it to a rule of thumb.
Do I need different tiles for the floor and the walls?
Often, yes. Wall tiles are not always rated for floors, though many floor tiles can go on a wall. If you want one material running through a room, say so early. It is easier to design around from the start than to retrofit.
What about underfloor heating?
Porcelain and ceramic suit it well, which is part of why they are so common in bathrooms and kitchens. Natural stone behaves differently and needs more thought. Mention it while you are choosing, not when you are ordering.
Do you only sell to trade?
No. We supply fitters and builders across Northern Ireland, and we sell to homeowners doing one room. The advice is the same either way.
PLANNING YOUR VISIT
Tell us the room. We will size the tile.
The showroom is at Moira, within easy reach of Belfast, Lisburn, Lurgan and Portadown. You do not need an appointment to look. If you want time with someone on a full bathroom layout, ring ahead so we can give you an hour properly.
If you would rather narrow things down first, the tile selection guide covers what the ranges are and where each one suits, and the project gallery shows work we have supplied.