RANGE REVIEW: TILES & TILING


their tiling project to look before they come in to a store to pick their tile out,” she says. “At Topps Tiles we completely embrace this approach and provide our customers with as much creative inspiration and help as possible. In fact, our stores have dedicated creative stations designed to bring these ideas to life with the help of our expert staff who can offer insight on grout colours, trims and more. Add to this our aspirational social media channels and our website, which includes a tile visualiser, so that customers can see how a chosen tile might look in a room of their choice, and they have a completely inspirational offering both on and offline. “This approach has been key in helping us to drive sales and continue to inspire homeowners, whether they’re first time buyers or those who are upsizing or downsizing. Not only does it provide the customer with a wealth of creative interior design inspiration, but also enables us to


market our large variety of stylish, innovative products and designs by tapping into this hunger


for


interiors expertise.” Lee Rudkin of Tile Choice feels that, as a company, it is important to take a few risks in order to keep the


but the average person with a three- bedroom semi is probably thinking he doesn’t want his house to look like a Spanish villa.” In terms of future trends, he has noticed homeowners are particularly interested in bringing


“The new thing now is Indoor-Outdoor...People want a seamless look to go from their conservatory/ extension, straight outside. So it looks like the same floor running from the inside to the outside. It has a real design edge to it.” Lee Rudkin, Tile Choice


customer interested. He says: “We buy direct from factories abroad, so we’re always attending exhibitions in Spain or Italy, which is the most fashion-led areas for this industry. Over there, they come up with some really crazy ideas which sound cool, but you have to think in the UK market will it work? We do take a punt on some things and we try it,


the outdoors inside the home, and creating a more seamless transition from the conservatory/kitchen/ dining area into the garden area, with people opting to have the same flooring from one room into the outdoors.


“The new thing now, and I think it’s going to be the new trend, is called Indoor-Outdoor. You go


to a lot of these shows now and people are having big extensions on the back of their properties. They’re putting in these bi-folding doors, and they want that seamless look to go from their conservatory straight outside, so they product a 20mm tile for outside and a 10mm tile for inside, and the slip rating is different on the outside tile because it is weathered. So, it looks like the same floor running from the inside straight to the outside. It has a real design edge to it, because instead of sticking slabs outside and tiles inside, you have the same finish and same product.


“The tile industry has picked up on that and thought we can hone in on this trend by doing the same thing but with our product, and then you get the blend of the two. “It’s coming out now, we’re just starting to get it out now, and it was being pushed in a show in Valencia so we will have that in the next few months to be sent out; people who have access to that, that is what they are looking for and that’s what we want to provide.”


www.diyweek.net


15 JUNE 2018 DIY WEEK 19


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