With Autumn in full swing, now is the time to be planning your outdoor spaces in readiness for next Spring. If you’ve read any of my previous blog posts you might have realised I’m a bit of a gardening geek, so when I’m not up to my eyeballs it’s the garden that’s top of my list. I know us Brits can’t help but talk about the weather, but really we’ve had a pretty fabulous Summer and Autumn, don’t you think? I’m quick to forget the scorched lawn and tireless evenings taken up by watering, it was impressive how quickly the garden recovered too. So I think it’s fair to assume more time was spent outside than inside this year and that’s why it’s important to make our outdoor spaces feel as good as our indoor.
If you haven’t heard about outdoor porcelain tiles, you must have been hiding. So we all know the popularity of the hard-wearing indoor porcelain tile, especially those that mimic concrete, wood and stone effect tiles, the large format sizes are as desirable as ever too. So of course the option of a slightly thicker version for external use wasn’t far behind. Just to put the record straight, the majority of 10-12mm thickness porcelain tiles are perfectly suitable for exteriors provided they are fixed as they would be inside. By that I mean on a pre-prepared, solid concrete base and fixed with a cement-based adhesive. The beauty of 20mm thick outdoor porcelain tiles is that they are weighty enough to be fixed onto a wet mortar bed of 1:4 cement to dry sand, over a compacted sub-base.
Hard landscaping is an essential element of an outdoor space, especially in the immediate proximity of a building for practicality as much as being visually appealing. There is a growing trend to continue the exact same flooring from inside to out, so here are our top three outdoor porcelain tiles for achieving this look.