# Laying Tile on the Diagonal



## RippySkippy (Feb 9, 2007)

It depends on the room and it's use whether the center is the right place to start. Sometimes a slight adjustment is needed one way or the other to keep from having small triangular pieces along each wall. In a bathroom for example if you have a tub and wall making a 90* corner and it's clearly visible when you enter the room then your pattern should take advantage of it. If it's a mud room, I'd say do what looks the best.

If the room isn't square, and you bisect as you say, won't both walls have a visual (grout) line that highlights the out of squareness? Is there a chance that one wall is straighter than the other and you could use that wall as your 1/2 tile starting side, the let what ever happens on the other side? Just a thought.

By the way a couple of other things, before laying the floor tile pick up a Tavey Tile puck (Lowes), it makes it way easy to get rid of floor tile lippage. Good luck to ya..and if you haven't found the forums over at John Bridge, you should.


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## Bud Cline (Mar 12, 2006)

"Tavy Tile Puck" hahahahahahahaha!:laughing: I love 'em! They are great for levelling your camper trailer when at the lake. Other than that it is a totally useless item :no: whose idea was stolen from Camper World.


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## [email protected] (Mar 11, 2008)

Yeah, I thought of that after I posted. I'll check the length to be sure I don't wind up with a small piece at one end. The room was built to be square, but as in any house, it runs a 1/2" or so wide at one end. The idea was to split the difference so that it doesn't look like it follows one wall and not the other. 

One long wall is all baseboard heat and the door...the other long long wall has a 5' vanity on it. One short wall is behind the toilet, the one that really shows is the short wall against the tub. I'll also be installing tall baseboard molding that's 3/4" thick so that will cover and small irregularities.

Never heard of the Tavy tile puk....I do have levelers that I use for my RV, maybe I'll just use one of those.....


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## skymaster (Jun 6, 2007)

I would snap lines both ways, then you have the theoretical center point, put a tile down with the 4 points lined up and just measure from those points to each wall. If the measurements are the same then you can just start setting from that point. If numbers are not then you know how much to adjust.


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## Bud Cline (Mar 12, 2006)

That's correct! Snapping lines in both directions and remembering this layout is still a square grid (skewed) will help you to keep on course and stay straight.:yes:


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## Bill_Vincent (Feb 20, 2008)

Here's a thread that explains it pretty well:

http://www.floorstransformed.com/ceramic-tile-forum/2005/bill-vincent-and-diagonal-layout-17433.html


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## MD_Tile (Mar 30, 2008)

something to keep in mind when doing your layout, if your room is not perfectly square, your cuts against the walls may increase or decrease in size so beware if you intend to start by laying full tiles against the wall. 
Most of the time we look at the focal points of any area to determine where we want to place our tile to create a symetrical layout and eliminate as many small cuts as possible. sometimes shifting your layout by a half can help. Other times we like to see full tiles along one area and hide cuts in less visble areas such as behind toilets and in closets. When ceramic inlays, patterns, borders etc are involved it will take a little more brain power.
when laying tile diagonally i found that it helps to shift my body diagonally also so that i am actually positioned square with the tiles. this becomes difficult in small areas and close to the walls. Dont rely on spacers, tiles can have slight differences in size which will ultimately throw you off course when your trying to keep a straight line. Use a chalk line and you will stay on track. you can use spacers as a guide but you will need to make slight adjustments as you go to accomodate for any differences in the size of tiles. spacers can also help on the walls when setting tiles to help keep them from sagging but you may need to adjust them as well.


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