Can You Tile Over Tiles?

Tiling over existing tiles is a great way to update your bathroom (or any other room with tired old tiles) without the expense or hassle of having to rip up all your old tiles.

Especially if you’re DIY tiling, simply laying your new tiles on the old tiles is a lot easier than the hard labour of pulling up your existing ones.

Not only that, it can be much cheaper too. For the DIYer, removing old tiles often means hiring specialist tools and machines. And if you’re paying for a professional tiler, pulling up tiles very quickly adds to your labour costs.

While tiling on tile is a great solution for outdated tiles, it’s no solution for an existing tile job with issues. If your old tiles are loose, drummy, lifting, too uneven or badly damaged they are better off removed. Tiling on tiles like this will not improve the problems.

The main drawback to tiling on existing tiles is the extra layer of thickness, or added height, you’ll end up with. Particularly with floor tiles, by effectively adding a second layer of tiles over another one, your floor will end up several millimetres higher.

But as long as you measure carefully and trim the bottoms of any doors that open into the space, there’s no reason this should create any issues.