If you’re doing your own tiling project, don’t forget to use tile spacers. These inexpensive tools slot in between tiles during the laying process, ensuring your grout joints are even and that you get a neat finish.
Tiny, plastic tile spacers can cost £5 or less for a pack of 1,000, but you shouldn’t just purchase the first product you spot. Differences in size and type will affect a spacer’s suitability for a particular tiling task.
We asked tiling experts how to choose the right tile spacers for your project – and how to use them effectively when tiling a wall.
What are tile spacers for?
Whether you're tiling a kitchen wall or tiling a bathroom floor, tile spacers are a small tiling tool, used in large quantities during the tile laying process to ensure the grout gap between tiles is consistently at the desired width.
Whichever of the many tile laying patterns you choose, from straight lay to herringbone, suitable tile spacers can be used to create a uniform, professional-looking effect.
“I couldn’t live without tile spacers,” says Kevin Bailey, owner and director of Tiler Required?, a Buckinghamshire-based tiling company. “They do a good job of holding tiles level and straight, with a consistent grout gap.”
During laying, spacers also perform the essential role of limiting movement in the tiles, as your tile adhesive sets them in place. “Wherever you’re butting tiles up together, spacers ensure they won’t decouple from the substrate if the wall expands or contracts,” says Kevin.
Achieving the correct grout joints in a tiled area is not just an aesthetic goal. In some cases, BSI guidance stipulates that grout joints between tiles must fall within a specific range of widths.
“The grout joints exist for a purpose,” says Nathan Rees, Commercial Sales Representative of RUBI UK, a manufacturer of tiler spacers and other tiling products. “They are there to allow some flexibility or movement in the wall or floor, and the spacer size determines the width of the joint.”
Spacers can be placed into the corners where tiles meet in a pattern, or sticking out between the faces of two tiles, depending on your preferred method.
Kevin Bailey is the Owner and Director of Tiler Required?, a tiling firm based in Buckinghamshire. Bailey has over two decades’ experience in the tiling trade and frequently shares his work on Instagram.
RUBI is an international tiling tools and accessories brand, designing and producing products for tile cutting, placement and maintenance – including tile spacers. Nathan Rees is a Commercial Sales Representative for RUBI’s UK division, with 19 years’ experience at the company.
Common sizes and types of tile spacers
There are three main types of tile spacers: cross spacers, T-shaped spacers and wedge spacers.
- Cross spacers: "These are the standard type," says Nathan Rees. "They’re available in sizes from 1 to 10mm in increments of one millimetre and they’re used for your standard tiling set out with tiles in a grid."
- T-spacers: "These have three legs and also come in various sizes," explains Nathan. "They are used for certain laying patterns, especially a brick bond effect where the corners of the tiles form a ‘T’ shape rather than a cross."
- Spacer wedge: "These can be looked upon as an adjustable-size spacer, with the joint width depending on how far you push a wedge in," adds Nathan. "They help with laying irregularly shaped tiles, and they come in 5mm or 7.5mm sizes, both of which taper to zero. You’d use them for slight adjustments rather than standard jobs."
Another important point of difference is the length of a spacer’s legs. “You can get ones with short legs or ones with long legs,” Kevin Bailey notes. “I use long because they go a bit further along the joint, which helps to make sure it’s straight and consistent.”
Most tile spacers are made by a handful of brands. “I usually use RUBI spacers, which are easy to find at shops like Topps Tiles, although I occasionally use Vitrex spacers (available from Screwfix) instead, if their spacers are more convenient to get hold of,” says Kevin.
“There isn’t much difference between makes, but you do get used to using what you use – some spacers feel a bit more brittle and snap more easily than others," he adds.
Shop tile spacers for your tiling project
Cross spacers are perfect for laying patterns which form a grid, such as straight lay or diagonal. They come in various sizes, so take care to buy the correct width for your grout gaps. This comes as a pack of 300.
Also made in a range of sizes, T-spacers are used where tiles create a T-junction, as is the case with brick or running bond laying patterns. This is for a pack of 200.
Popular with professional tilers, spacer wedges are used to account for discrepancies in the sizing of tiles. The further they are pushed into a joint, the wider the grout gap will be. Pack of 500.
How to choose the right tile spacers
They key point to remember is that choosing the right tile spacers for a tiling project comes down to how wide your grout joints will be.
“The correct grout joint width (and therefore spacer size) will often depend on the size of the tile,” says Nathan Rees. “Large tiles tend to require larger grout joints, but also if you’ve got tiles that aren’t perfectly calibrated – so their sizing is slightly off – then using different sizes of spacers can allow the tiler to make up for imperfections in the size of certain tiles.”
Grout gaps of around 3mm for wall tiles and around 6mm for floor tiles are common, but there are exceptions. For instance, relatively small, rectangular metro tiles tend to look best with the narrowest compatible grout gap, while large-format tiles often require an especially wide gap to account for stresses caused by movement in the underlying floor or wall.
Some tile laying patterns dictate that T-shaped tile spacers with three ‘legs’ will be easier to use than a conventional cross-shaped spacer.
“If you’ve got brick-style subway tiles set out in a running bond laying pattern, the T-shaped spacers are fairly handy,” says Kevin Bailey. “We certainly go through a few of them on metro wall installations, and anything else that’s on a brick bond.”
Fitting tile trim is another way to ensure your tiling project has a professional looking finish.
How to use tile spacers
Using tile spacers is pretty straightforward: you place them into the gaps where the edges of tiles come close to others, allowing the legs of the spacer to determine the gap between the tiles. You can do this throughout the laying process, adding spacers with every new tile you lay.
However, one tiling mistake DIYers sometimes make is removing spacers at the wrong time, while the tiles are setting in place with your chosen tile adhesive. Remove them too early, and the tiles may shift or fall.
How long your tile adhesive takes to dry depends on the product you are using. “The right time to remove them depends on your adhesive,” says Kevin Bailey. “We tend to use either a rapid set or a standard set tile adhesive. Rapid set is usually set after three hours, but it is secure enough for spacers to be removed within about 30 minutes. With standard set adhesive, leave the spacers in place for 24 hours.”
In some cases, you might not need to remove the spacers at all. “If you push the spacer down far enough then you can grout straight over the spacer, provided it is 2-3mm below the face of the tile,” Kevin notes.
It's important you work out the amount of tile adhesive you need too.
FAQs
Are tile levelling kits better than tile spacers?
Tile levelling kits are a more advanced tile laying solution, often used by professional tilers and sometimes favoured by DIYers who have plenty of tiling to do.
“We use levelling kits and systems with larger format tiles,” says Kevin Bailey, owner and director of Tiler Required?. “They’re made up of a baseplate that goes under the tiles, and a clip and wedge system that holds the tiles in place from above and ensures the gaps are the right width.”
“For anything with tiles over 300 x 600mm, we would tend to use this system,” he adds.
For certain tiling projects, especially those involving large format tiles, many professional tilers are now using a tile levelling kit rather than tile spacers. This one is suitable for tile formats 30x30cm (12x12in) or larger.
What did tilers use before tile spacers?
Tilers have long aspired to achieve uniform grout joints, but tile spacers are a fairly recent invention, patented by Bob Joos in 1989. Before then, tilers had to make do with less specialised items.
“Around 25 years ago, when I first started in the industry a lot of the older tradesmen used matchsticks or dowels, and they asked me why I used spacers,” says Kevin Bailey. “But for me, it’s always been a plastic spacer.”
The same cross-shaped and T-shaped spacers have dominated the market for decades, but manufacturers have designed newer types more recently, securing some uptake among tilers.
“Some people use horseshoe spacers now which are a larger, U-shaped spacer,” says Kevin. “I haven’t moved on to these yet, as I feel that the old cross or T-spacers do a job that’s not broken and doesn’t need fixing.”
Small tools and materials such as tile spacers are sometimes overlooked, but they can make a vast difference to DIY projects at minimal expense.
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