Commercial Tile Installation

What Commercial Tile Requires

Commercial tile installation is different from residential work in a few practical ways. The volumes are larger, the substrates are often concrete slab, the traffic expectations are higher, and the installation timeline usually has to work around a business's operating hours.

On the technical side, large commercial floors require a medium-bed mortar (sometimes called large-and-heavy-tile mortar) rather than standard thinset. Standard thinset has a maximum bed thickness of about 3/16 inch — not enough to flatten a concrete slab that has variation across a large area. Medium-bed mortar can be applied at greater thickness without slumping, which means we can achieve a flat installation even over concrete with moderate irregularity.

Movement joints are also critical on commercial floors. Large continuous tile fields without movement joints will crack as the building moves seasonally. TCNA (Tile Council of North America) guidelines call for movement joints at all columns, at perimeter walls, and at intervals through the field. We follow those guidelines because skipping them is what causes commercial floors to fail.

For commercial restrooms and wet areas, we apply waterproofing and use epoxy grout or a high-performance stain-resistant grout. Epoxy grout is non-porous, chemical-resistant, and doesn't require sealing — worth the added installation time in a commercial restroom that gets heavy use and cleaning chemicals.

Scheduling Around Your Business

We work early mornings, evenings, and weekends when needed. For businesses that can't afford to shut down a space for multiple days, we can phase the work — completing sections in sequence so portions of the space remain usable. We'll talk through the logistics during the estimate and build a schedule that works for your operation.