Warming Ceramic Tile Floors

Tile floors are beautiful, stylish - and cold! Fortunately there are products on the market for warming ceramic tile floors. Especially in bathrooms where people attempt to get ready to greet the day, a cold floor in the winter can be a real drag. Rugs are one option, but they can be a nuisance, slipping, wrinkling, and requiring frequent laundering. Besides, they cover up the beauty of your ceramic floor. Warming ceramic tile floors simply makes the bathroom more comfortable in cold weather.

One method of warming ceramic tile floors is installing a heated mat underneath the tiles. These mats cost about $500 to install in an average bathroom. They consist of a thin fiberglass material that is rolled out over the subfloor surface.

This material has a heating cable woven throughout. It is attached to the subfloor with a hot glue gun. Thinset is the type of adhesive used to apply ceramic tiles to the floor, and it is spread onto the floor warming material. In some cases, cement board is applied above the floor warming layer.

This device for warming ceramic tile floors runs on electricity and has a wall switch built in so you can turn the floor heater on and off as desired. The heating cables work something like an old fashioned cast iron radiator, except that they heat at a much lower level.

According to the manufacturers of the DeltaWarm system for warming ceramic tile floors, a bathroom floor set to 85 degrees F actually warms the entire room. These floor warming cables can also be used under other floor surfaces, including stone, decorative concrete, vinyl, and even carpet. Floor warmers provide radiant heat, which warms objects, but does not necessarily warm the air.

When a home is warmed by forced air, as with central heating, there tend to be warm areas and cool areas. A radiant heater used for warming ceramic tile floors can provide the extra help needed to make the temperature more consistent throughout the house. Radiant heat doesn't dry air out like forced air heating does, and it also doesn't blow allergens around. It isn't noisy, either. Radiant heat systems such as the floor heater can either supplement another heating system or in some cases, replace a forced air system.