Real stone tiles look beautiful, but if there’s one criticism we hear time and time again it’s that they’re too cold. This can indeed be a problem. Stone tiles are generally far more conductive than other floor types such as wooden boards, carpet, or vinyl and this makes them particularly cold to the touch which is hardly ideal for those who love walking about the house.
But what if there was a way to have your marble tiles without freezing your feet? Is there a better approach to real stone tiling?
Underfloor Heating Saves The Day
When it comes to the wonders of modern engineering, you just can’t beat underfloor heating. Underfloor heating feels amazing, keeps your house warm, and completely mitigates the downside to have stone tiles. Whether you’ve got slate, granite, or marble tiles, underfloor heating is one of the best heating solutions you could ask for.
Not only does it make getting that first coffee of the morning so much easier, but by heating your house from the bottom, all that heat is taken advantage of in the rest of the building. Heat, after all, travels up, so you lose far less of it than you would otherwise.
But What If Underfloor Heating Is Too Expensive?
The major downside to underfloor heating is the cost. It’s expensive to install and expensive to run, and after spending all that money on a beautiful marbled tiled kitchen, do you really want to spend the rest of your life crippled by heating bills?
Well, if you’re looking for alternative solutions then you’re in luck. Before the invention of underfloor heating, plenty of people used marble tiles and still managed to keep themselves warm.
How?
Through good insulation techniques. Not only does this mean making sure that your walls, windows, and roof are all well-insulated – which will save you money in the long run whether you have marble tiles or not – but it also means adjusting your decor in small ways to keep the heat in.
Make use of rugs. Use draft excluders. Make an effort to keep doors shut to keep the heat in. These changes are small, but, when put together, they can go a long way towards keeping you warm.
At the end of the day, marble tiles have been around for a long time and in that time, a lot of people have thought long and hard about how to keep the chill out. They’ve done the work, so you don’t have to!
