Extend your interior design with tiling trends for your garden

Weber UK

With the weather starting to improve, we are heading to our gardens for relaxation, social gatherings and to escape the monotony of the home office!  We asked one of our sister Saint-Gobain brands, CTD, about the growing trend of taking the indoors outdoors using tiling to increase alfresco living space and what advice they can offer.

Our external living spaces can sometimes be left undeveloped and unrealised, often thought to be just a place for green fingered gardeners. With the growing trend for outdoor living, our external spaces should be a place for spending time with our families and friends, enjoying alfresco dining or simply chilling at end of a long day with a drink.

With our gardens creating an extension to our homes, how can we create a stylish, outdoor haven that not only looks amazing but is easy to maintain? Outdoor porcelain tiles are the solution and are being used more frequently as a key feature in contemporary garden design. Perfect for paths, patios and surrounding a pool or hot tub, they are an upgrade from standard concrete paving slabs, wood or composite decking and come in a comprehensive range of styles and designs.

Do I have to use tiles specific for outdoor use?

At 20mm thick, external tiles for patios are double the thickness as standard internal porcelain tiles, but this is not the only difference with other features and benefits including…

  • Hard wearing, scratch resistant surface
  • Low maintenance – just sweep and wash down
  • Non-porous, so no water ingress which may cause cracks in the winter
  • UV resistant ultimate peace of mind in all weather conditions
  • Stain and mildew resistant meaning any spills can be easily cleaned
  • Anti-slip surface properties - safe even when wet

Bringing interior design to the outdoors

The popularity of open plan living has been growing for some years, typically seen in kitchen and dining spaces, knocking down walls to create open plan entertainment spaces or even the full ground floor area. Recently, we are seeing homeowners using open plan design to break the confines between the inside and outside, crossing between the boundaries of their house and garden seamlessly.

Choosing the thicker outdoor tiles to coordinate with thinner indoor tiles, allows for a flawless finish from your internal living area to your external patio, which hardly any other floor covering options can offer. The uninterrupted design means you can move easily from one space to the next, enjoying a coherent and balanced indoor - outdoor living area ideal for active modern living.

We hope our blog has been helpful in offering the benefits of incorporating porcelain tiles externally and inspired you to improve your garden into a practical, low maintenance and elegant space that can be enjoyed throughout the year.

For more advice on tiling externally please visit the CTD guide of Choosing Outdoor Tiles.

Want to know more?

If you need help with choosing the correct adhesives and grout for your project, Weber can offer you support in specifying the right products… take a look at our cement based adhesives all which are suitable for external application and our weberjoint premium tile grout available in 18 colours is a perfect solution for external application with PURE CLEAN anti-stain technology and is suitable for joint widths to 20mm.

Please get in touch if you would like to know more or if you have your own project you’d like to discuss:

Click Compare to help you choose the right product for your project, if you need further assistance please email technical@netweber.co.uk

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