When we talk about tiles that need to hold up to moisture or high traffic areas and looks good, ceramic tile is an obvious choice for durability but there are so many options to choose from. Natural wood look tile trends are here to stay for a while so that was an option we jumped right on for our basement flooring! Wood look tile flooring can be made from either ceramic or porcelain, and is scratch resistant, holds up to moisture and water, and has a timeless quality much like wood floors are.  Wood look ceramic tile  was the perfect choice for us in our basement a few ears ago where we really needed moisture resistance and durability and we still love it! We had wanted a cozy sub-level living room space but didn’t want to install carpet in case of future water issues or basement humidity.

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We chose a dark wood tile for our basement floors to be installed right on our slab which would not only be in our main family room area, but also in  the small office. The wood-look floors we chose not only came to a close match to our upstairs hardwood flooring, for  a cohesiveness throughout the house, but added warmth and the wider planks added a rustic touch.

We bought our version of ceramic wood tiles at Home Depot and we used their installers for ease of coordination. Our installer was really fast and had most of the room done the first day. I was already thrilled in how much it had the look of wood and it had just enough faux grain in the design to resemble the dark oak we have upstairs. We choose tile for our basement sub-level flooring even though it was a little pricier because I wanted to know that if we had water, or even worse, a sewer back up, we could easily clean and sanitize the floor. Any other flooring including vinyl, laminate or carpet would need to be completely removed if that happened and we didn’t want to deal with that!

When installing a wood-look tile floor is to make sure the grout lines are placed as close as possible and the grout matches the tile color or a color variation in the tile for a seamless look. Using a contrasting or grout color that is too light or too dark will result in a less realistic look of the tile wood planks.

For these floors we chose a medium brown grout called Tobacco Brown. It matches the floor perfectly and will darken slightly over time with foot traffic. Find wood look ceramic tile here.

 While we decided to lay our faux-wood floor in a classic wood floor pattern, it can be laid in many creative tile patterns such as herringbone,  basketweave, offset, or running bond just as any other rectangular ceramic or porcelain tile.

Doesn’t it just look gorgeous! The first day we could walk on it, the kids played down there for hours. While the tile can be cooler temperature wise, this is a tile we could have put radiant heat under if we wanted to. We opted to have a big throw rug where our feet would be or where the kids would be sitting on the floor.  The tile pattern is very similar to the tile pattern in our kitchen subway tile.

If you are in a home where you are worried about a real wood floor, this wood look tile is a great second option especially for areas such as mudrooms, showers,basements and entryways (I’ve even seen it for countertops!). It not only has an elegant look, but is comes in so many shades and wood grain and textures including natural wood color, bleached wood, maple, walnut and even rustic antique hand-scraped wood.

It will be fun to have another space to stretch out in and add decor! While the wood look porcelain tiles are pretty worry-free and resistant to stains, abrasion, mold and more, they do act like any other ceramic or porcelain tile and can chip or crack if something extremely heavy is dropped on it. We learned that the hard way any banned the kids from bringing glass drinkware downstairs. We had a glass just shatter when it hit the tile and take out a small chip. Luckily it wasn’t in a noticeable area.

 

We love our new floor, and after he finished the main area, our tile installer started on the laundry room. I can’t wait to do laundry in a room that does not have  a gross, old concrete floor!

For our laundry room and basement bathroom, I opted for a white ceramic mosaic and a dark warm grey grout called Winter Gray. To transition between the two different tile floors, in the rooms, we needed a solution that looked good. We placed one of the wood tiles length-wise as a threshold; it works perfectly and looks really good!

The old tile we had in the bathroom was a light tile with a light grout and with in two years the grout was dark and kind of gross any way, no matter how much I scrubbed it! This way, the staining from age won’t show.

While I like to do the majority of DIY projects myself, I have to admit, installing a wood look tile floor and our bathroom hexagon tile was a nice one to take a back seat on! He was done in 3 days with both rooms. He was clean, fast and I did not have to do any hauling, lifting or bending!

We are going to start moving some furniture down there this week and hopefully will be able to have everything super livable by the beginning of September.

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