The cost to tile a kitchen in 2026 splits into two very different jobs. A splashback is a small, fiddly, high-visibility strip that most homeowners budget a few hundred pounds for. A floor is a larger area with heavier tiles, more preparation and a longer cure, and it usually costs several times more. Quotes that lump the two together hide where the money actually goes, which is why two tilers can price the same kitchen hundreds of pounds apart and both be honest.
This guide breaks the job down the way a tiler prices it: labour per square metre, materials per square metre, and the preparation work that sits underneath both. We fit kitchens across Bromley and south east London, so the figures below reflect what the work genuinely costs here rather than a national average that suits nobody.
The short answer on kitchen tiling costs
For a typical 12m² kitchen floor plus a standard splashback run, most homeowners in 2026 land somewhere between £1,200 and £2,800 all in. The spread is wide because tile choice alone can swing materials by a factor of ten, and because floor preparation is invisible until the old covering comes up.
Broadly, tilers charge separately for:
- Labour: roughly £30 to £60 per m² for floors and £25 to £50 per m² for walls, before any pattern or prep uplift.
- Materials: tiles themselves from about £15 per m² for basic ceramic to well over £100 per m² for natural stone or large-format porcelain, plus adhesive, grout, primer and trims.
- Preparation: levelling compound, backer board, removing the old floor, priming. This is the line that most often turns a cheap quote into an expensive one.
London and the South East typically run 20% to 30% above the national labour rate. The Midlands, the North and parts of Wales usually sit 10% to 15% below it.
Kitchen floor tiling costs
A kitchen floor is where the bulk of the budget goes. For most UK kitchens the floor is somewhere between 8m² and 20m², and a competent tiler will lay roughly 8m² to 12m² of floor tile a day depending on tile size and cutting.
On labour alone, expect £30 to £60 per m². That range is not arbitrary. The bottom sits with a straightforward 300×300 ceramic laid brick or stack bond onto a sound, level, primed screed. The top sits with 600×1200 porcelain, which needs two people to handle, a levelling system to control lippage, and far more careful setting out because any deviation in the substrate shows up instantly across a long tile.
Materials for a kitchen floor:
- Basic ceramic: around £15 to £30 per m². Fine for a rental or a tight budget, but ceramic chips more readily than porcelain under a dropped pan.
- Porcelain: around £25 to £70 per m². The default for kitchen floors, and the right default. It is denser, less porous and far more resistant to the abuse a kitchen floor takes.
- Natural stone: £50 to £120 per m² and up, plus sealing before and after grouting, plus a labour uplift because stone is less dimensionally consistent than porcelain.
- Ancillaries: budget £8 to £15 per m² for adhesive, grout, primer, spacers and a levelling system. On a floor this is not optional.
Then there is the substrate, which is the single biggest source of quote variation. A kitchen floor has to be flat, sound and able to take the load without movement. Timber floors almost always need overboarding with a tile backer board or a plywood overlay rather than tiling straight onto floorboards, because boards flex and flexing cracks grout and tiles. Concrete or screed usually needs priming and often a self-levelling compound. Either can add £15 to £40 per m² on top of everything above.
Underfloor heating changes the maths again. If a mat or wet system is going in under the tile, the tiler needs a flexible adhesive and a flexible grout, and the build-up needs planning against door heights before anything is ordered.
Kitchen splashback tiling costs
A splashback is small in area and large in labour per square metre. A typical run behind a worktop is 2m² to 4m², but it contains a disproportionate amount of cutting: around sockets, up to wall units, into corners, around a window reveal, behind a hob.
Most kitchen splashbacks come in between £150 and £450 for labour, with materials on top. That works out well above the headline per-m² rate, and it should. Nobody prices a 2m² job at 2m² of rate, because the setting out, the cuts and the making good take the same half day whether the run is short or long. Many tilers apply a minimum day rate for jobs this size, and that is normal rather than a mark-up.
Two things push a splashback price up:
- Pattern. A herringbone or a proper brick bond with mitred external corners takes roughly 30% to 40% longer than a straight stack. Metro tiles look simple and are not, because every joint is visible against a worktop line.
- Cuts around services. Sockets, switches and an extractor all need clean, square holes. Cutting a socket aperture badly is the fastest way to make a good tile job look amateur.
What drives a kitchen tiling quote up
If two quotes are far apart, the difference is almost never the tile. It is one of these:
- Removal of the old floor. Lifting old tile, adhesive and screed is dusty, slow work. Old adhesive beds in particular can take longer to remove than the new floor takes to lay.
- Substrate remediation. Overboarding a timber floor, levelling a dished screed, or replacing a rotten section near a dishwasher leak.
- Sequencing around the kitchen fit. Tiling before units go in means more tile and more cost but a floor that runs continuously and survives a future kitchen change. Tiling after means less tile but a floor that is cut around every plinth.
- Tile size. Large format looks like less work because there are fewer tiles. It is more work, because the tolerance for substrate deviation collapses as the tile gets longer.
- Access and protection. A first floor flat with no parking and a shared stair costs more to work in than a ground floor house with a driveway.
The standards behind this are not vague. Wall and floor tiling in the UK is covered by the BS 5385 series of codes of practice, published by the British Standards Institution, with separate parts for internal wall tiling and for internal and external floor tiling. A tiler who prices proper substrate preparation is not padding the quote, they are pricing the job to the standard. The Tile Association is the UK trade body and a reasonable place to sanity-check what a specification should include.
How to compare kitchen tiling quotes properly
Ask every tiler to split the quote into labour, materials and preparation. A single number tells you nothing and makes the cheapest quote look best by default, when the cheapest quote is often the one that has assumed the floor is flat.
Specific questions worth asking:
- What are you assuming about the substrate, and what happens to the price if that assumption is wrong?
- Is the tile supplied by you or by me, and who carries the cost of breakage and shortfall?
- How much wastage have you allowed? Ten per cent is normal for a straight lay, more like 15% for a diagonal or herringbone, and more again if the tile has a strong pattern that needs matching.
- Are trims, adhesive, grout and primer in the price or extra?
- Is the old floor removal and disposal included, and are skip costs in there?
One practical note on ordering: buy the whole job in one batch. Tiles are made in batches and shade varies between them, so topping up a shortfall later frequently produces a visibly different tile. Order the wastage allowance up front and keep the offcuts.
Frequently asked questions
Is it cheaper to tile a kitchen floor before or after the units go in?
Tiling after the units are fitted uses less tile, so the material cost is lower. Tiling before uses more tile but gives a continuous floor, avoids a fiddly cut line around every plinth, and means the kitchen can be changed later without relaying the floor. On a mid-range porcelain the extra tile is usually a modest sum against the benefit, so tiling first is normally the better call unless the tile is expensive.
Can you tile a kitchen floor over existing tiles?
Sometimes, but it needs checking rather than assuming. The existing tiles must be firmly bonded with no hollow spots, the combined build-up must not foul doors or appliances, and the surface needs mechanical keying and a suitable primer. If any of the old tiles are loose the whole lot should come up, because tiling onto a failing bed just moves the failure up a layer.
How long does tiling a kitchen take?
A splashback is usually a day, sometimes two if it is patterned or heavily cut. A floor is typically two to three days for laying and grouting, plus a day or more beforehand if the substrate needs levelling or overboarding. Grout and adhesive need to cure before heavy traffic, so allow a day after grouting before the kitchen is back in normal use.
Do I need a different tile for a kitchen floor than for a splashback?
Yes. Floor tiles need a slip rating suitable for a surface that will get wet and greasy, and enough strength to take point loads. Wall tiles are thinner and are not rated for foot traffic. You can put a floor tile on a wall, but you must never put a wall tile on a floor.
Why is my splashback quote so high for such a small area?
Because the area is not what drives the cost. The setting out, the cuts around sockets and units, the making good and the site set-up take roughly the same time whether the run is 2m² or 4m². Most tilers apply a minimum charge that reflects a half or full day on site.
Does underfloor heating add much to the tiling cost?
The tiling labour rises modestly, mainly because the system needs protecting during the lay and the adhesive and grout must be the flexible sort. The bigger cost is the heating system and its installation rather than the tiling. It also needs planning early, since the build-up affects door clearances and threshold heights.
If you want a figure for your own kitchen rather than a range, the useful thing to send a tiler is the floor area, the tile you are considering, what is currently down, and a photo of the splashback run with the sockets visible. That is enough to price properly. You can see the rest of our tiling guides and cost breakdowns on the Bromley Tilers homepage.