Hanging and caring for a ceramic tile

A fired ceramic tile is close to indestructible in normal use and extremely destructible in one specific way: falling. Almost everything worth knowing about care follows from that.

Three ways to put it up

Adhesive strips, a drilled hook, or a stand. The right choice depends far more on the wall than on the tile.

• Adhesive strips: no damage, no tools, quick. Reliable only on a smooth, clean, sound surface.
• A drilled hook or a small shelf: the only genuinely permanent option, and the right one above anywhere a fall would matter.
• A wooden stand: no fixing at all. Good for a shelf, a windowsill or a mantelpiece, and good if you are giving the tile to someone who rents.

When adhesive strips hold, and when they do not

They hold well on painted plaster that is sound, on gloss and satin paint, on glass and on tiled walls. They fail on textured or woven wallpaper, on fresh emulsion that has not fully cured, on chalk or lime paint, on raw plaster and on anything dusty.

Two habits make the difference. Clean the spot with rubbing alcohol rather than a household spray, because most sprays leave a film. Then press hard for a good thirty seconds and leave it a full hour before hanging anything on it. Most failures are impatience, not the adhesive.

One more thing: heat and steam soften adhesive over time. Directly above a hob or in an unventilated shower room, use a hook.

Drilling, done sensibly

Into plasterboard, use a plasterboard plug rather than a bare screw. Into brick or concrete, a 5 or 6 mm masonry bit and a plug is plenty for this weight. If you are drilling into an existing tiled wall, put a piece of masking tape over the spot first so the bit cannot skate, start slow and without hammer action, and switch hammer on only once you are through the glaze.

Position the hook so the tile hangs with its centre a little above eye level for a standing adult, unless it belongs to a group. In a group, the arrangement is levelled as a whole rather than tile by tile, which is covered in building a gallery wall.

Kitchens and bathrooms

Both are fine for the tile itself. Glazed ceramic does not care about humidity, steam or splashes, which is the reason Dutch kitchens were tiled in the first place. What does mind is the fixing and, if you have one, the wooden stand. Keep wood out of a shower room.

Grease is the only real kitchen issue. Near a hob, a tile will pick up a film of cooking grease exactly as the wall does, and it wants wiping every few months rather than every few years.

Cleaning, heat and the dishwasher

A damp cloth handles everything normal. For grease, warm water with a drop of washing-up liquid, then dry it. Nothing abrasive: no scouring pads, no cream cleaners, no bleach paste. The image is inside the glaze and the glaze is hard, but a scourer will dull the surface and dull is permanent.

Do not use it as a trivet or a coaster for hot pans. Ceramic dislikes sudden temperature change more than it dislikes heat, and a hot pan on a cool tile is exactly the shock that cracks one. And keep it out of the dishwasher: it is a decorative object, not tableware, and repeated dishwasher cycles are hard on glaze.

How it ages

Barely, is the honest answer. The image is fired in, so it does not fade in daylight the way an inkjet print does, and it does not lift or peel because there is no layer to lift. Colours stay as they were. Over many years a tile in a working kitchen may take on a slightly warmer tone from grease, which comes off with a proper clean.

What we stand behind if something does go wrong is written out under the quality guarantee. And if a first tile went well, the second one is easier: start from a photo tile.