floor tiles

As I twiddled my thumbs back in February and March waiting for the contract to be completed (i.e. waiting for the apartment to be officially ours!), I did a lot of thinking about flooring. Material? Colour?

Materials we considered were wood or wood laminate, tile, and I also did a bit of Googling about bamboo flooring. It pretty soon got narrowed down to tile, reasons being that wood is a bit of a liability in the high humidity here in Hong Kong, and tile is nice and cool for the long hot summers here.

Colour was not so easy to decide on, and even now, I am wondering if I am 100% happy with our choice. (Too late, because the tiles have been purchased and delivered already!) We picked up a few samples from tile shops of wood-look tiles (see picture below). When I first heard of these from a friend who used them, I thought they sounded like they might look tacky. But in fact, wood-look tiles look a lot like real wood flooring. You wouldn't necessarily realise such a flooring was not wood until you stood on it and felt the coolness of tile.

In the picture below you can see three wood-look tile samples, and the bottom left tile is a charcoal grey tile.


We went for the charcoal grey tile in the end! Something a little different, and Justin was quite keen on it. It is a matt finish, and the tiles are 60x60cm, so nice and big. I plan on white walls, and perhaps a feature painted wall or some wallpaper somewhere. Some of our current furniture is white, so I'll be looking to add some wood into the mix somewhere to warm up the place away from purely a black and white look.

Now I just need to figure out how to stop my two little dogs from shedding their WHITE fur all over our DARK floors!