Tiling before or after kitchen installation?

I get the „tiling before or after kitchen installation“ question regularly. And it's no coincidence that this is one of the most common topics when renovating an apartment. People want to know what the correct order of work is to avoid mistakes that will then be visible for years.

When you're deciding whether to tile before or after installing a kitchen, you're usually at the stage where construction is already underway. And that's often when the problem arises.

The scenario is usually similar.

Tiler's on site, doing the bathroom. And he offers.„Hey, I'm here. We'll do the kitchen tiling right away.“

It's a quick extra job for him. Fast money now. He doesn't have to deal with the follow-up of the kitchen installation, he doesn't have to wait for the countertop. He'll do it now. Invoice issued. Client agrees because it's faster. Tiler takes the money and moves on. But the client is the one who will be looking at the result for the next ten, fifteen years.

And if the corner doesn't fit, if there's a gap, if the worktop isn't cleanly connected...

So it's not the tile guy's problem. That's the owner's problem.

And now the technical reality,

which most people underestimate when asked „tiling before or after kitchen installation“. It is not enough to know the height of the future kitchen. You have to take into account too many factors:

• Uneven floor.
• The actual angle between the walls.
• The distance between the lower and upper cabinets.
• The flatness of the wall itself.
• Thickness of the worktop in the actual fitting, not on paper.

And that's just the beginning.

Even if the corner looks like 90° at first glance, it doesn't mean that the wall half a metre away doesn't move a few millimetres. And a few millimetres in the kitchen is not a detail. That's the difference between a clean connection and a visible gap.

The kitchen does not settle according to theory. It is settled by reality. According to the actual state of the building on a given day.

And until the lower cabinets are standing, the worktop is fitted and the final plane is precisely defined, any tiling is just a guess.

And the kitchen is not built on estimates.

Therefore, the answer to the question „tiling before or after kitchen installation“ is clear in my experience.

First the kitchen | Then the worktop | And finally the tiles

I'm not saying that tiling before installation is „sometimes wrong“. I'm saying it's always wrong.

Once you stick the tiling on first, you lock the space. You close yourself off to reality. And the reality on the job site is always different than the plan on paper. The kitchen has to define the space. Not the tiling. Once the tiling is done, everything else has to match it. And that's exactly the opposite of what it's supposed to be.

So if you're still deciding whether to tile before or after the kitchen installation, the answer is simple - the order of work determines the outcome for years to come. Before you stick the first tile in your kitchen, stop. Take advice from the person who will actually be fitting the kitchen. Not from the first person on site. One short consultation can save you years of looking at a detail that will annoy you every day.

You build a kitchen for ten, fifteen years. And compromises in the kitchen are always visible.