Tile Installation Cost Calculator
Tile installation costs from $18 a square foot for setting over a concrete slab to $28 over a timber subfloor with the old floor taken up and backer board down — the same tile and the same tiler. That difference is 36% of the bill and it is all underneath. The other big lever is the tile size: a 2-inch mosaic has 144 times the pieces of a 24-inch format, and somebody places every one of them.
Estimate the cost for your home
Estimated cost of the tiling, installed
$4,320
typical · range $2,979 to $5,662 · 144 sq ft · $30 per sq ft · 144 pieces to lay
Labour priced at national wages. Enter a ZIP code to price it for your area. 57% of this figure comes from modelled material prices — each line shows its own uncertainty.
Priced from bls.gov Aug 2026osha.gov Aug 2026and 1 more, all listed below
The one input that changes the answer for you.
The traditional answer over a timber floor: a layer of cement board screwed and bedded down first. It adds height, it adds weight and it adds a day, and it is what stops the floor moving under the tile.
The default and the middle of everything. Fast enough to lay, small enough to follow a floor that is not perfectly flat.
Denser, harder and nearly waterproof, which is why it is the default for floors, showers and anywhere that freezes. It needs a diamond blade and it takes longer to cut, which is where the extra hours go.
Grid or half-offset. Cuts only where the field meets a wall, which is the least waste and the least time.
The pattern wastes between 8% and 20% in cuts, so this job buys 155.5 square feet of tile to cover 144. Order it all at once: two batches of the same product are not the same colour.
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The figure above is already calculated. Each step just makes it more yours, and you can stop at any of them.
Why two tiling quotes can differ by double
It is almost never the tile or the tiler. It is what goes underneath.
- Demolition and substrate
- 37%
- Tile, setting and finishing
- 63%
Tile does not bend and a timber floor does, so something has to go between them — cement board or an uncoupling membrane. That is 37% of this figure, and the same tiling over a concrete slab would be $26 a square foot rather than $30. When two quotes for the same room differ by nearly double, the useful question is not why one is expensive. It is what each of them puts underneath.
The tile size decides the hours, not the price tag
| Format | Pieces | Setting hours | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mosaic, around 2 inches | 5,184 | 32 | $5,323 |
| Small format, around 6 inches | 576 | 21 | $4,714 |
| Standard, around 12 inches | 144 | 14 | $4,320 |
| Large format, 18 to 24 inches | 43 | 11 | $4,185 |
| Plank or wood-look, long and narrow | 331 | 19 | $4,584 |
A 2-inch mosaic has 144 times the pieces per square foot of a 24-inch tile, and every one is placed, aligned and cleaned. That is why the same tiler quotes very different rates for the same room depending on what you put in front of them, and why a mosaic shower floor is expensive out of all proportion to its area.
| Line item | Qty | Cost | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Take up the existing surface2 h + 0.06 h per sq ft where the old surface comes up | 10.6hour | $466–$501 | sourced |
| Haulage and disposal1 where the old surface comes up | 1job | $140–$400 | estimated±48% |
| Substrate preparation: wood subfloor with cement backer boardarea where the substrate is wood-backer | 144sq ft | $230–$490 | estimated±36% |
| Prepare and level the substratearea × hours per sq ft for the chosen substrate | 8.6hour | $447–$480 | sourced |
| Porcelain tile, suppliedarea plus pattern waste where the tile is porcelain | 156sq ft | $498–$1,866 | estimated±58% |
| Thinset, grout and trimarea | 144sq ft | $137–$331 | estimated±42% |
| Set the tilearea × (format hours × material factor + pattern surcharge) | 13.7hour | $712–$765 | sourced |
| Edge trim and bullnoselinear feet of exposed edge | 48linear ft | $154–$528 | estimated±55% |
| Protection, grout clean and final wash1 per job | 1job | $45–$140 | estimated±51% |
| Protection and cleaning hours2 h + 0.01 h per sq ft | 3.4hour | $150–$161 | sourced |
| Total | $2,979–$5,662 | ±31% |
Where these numbers come from
- A note on the demand figure behind this page
- We publish what our measurement says even when it is awkward, and here it is awkward. For “tile installation cost” Google Ads reports 12,100 searches a month and the clickstream-normalised figure reports 648 — a factor of nineteen, the widest gap of any keyword on this site. The provider does blend the two sources, but the consumer panel behind the blend saw a single search, so the blended number leans almost entirely on one data point. We quote the conservative figure and say that the other exists. What we do not do is treat the gap as evidence against the keyword: a one-observation sample cannot arbitrate anything, in either direction.
- Why the substrate is the whole answer
- Tile does not bend. A timber floor does. Set tile straight onto plywood and the floor flexes underfoot, the bond breaks and the grout lines crack within a season — which is why something has to go between them: cement backer board screwed and bedded, or a dimpled uncoupling membrane that lets the floor move while the tile stays still. Over a concrete slab none of that is needed, because a slab does not move. On this model that is the difference between $18 and $28 a square foot. Where plywood underlayment goes down first it is a composite wood product under the standards EPA administers following the Formaldehyde Standards for Composite Wood Products Act of 2010. Retrieved 2026-08-23.
- The format is the hours
- A 2-inch mosaic has 144 times the pieces per square foot of a 22-inch format, and each piece is placed, aligned and its joints cleaned. On this room that is $4,956 against $3,972. ⚠️ The reverse is not free either: a large tile cannot bend, so it shows every hollow in the floor as a raised corner, and on a large-format job the levelling underneath often costs more than the pattern does. Adding a herringbone takes this room to $4,542, because every piece meets two neighbours and the whole perimeter is cuts.
- Labour rates by area, with the largest caveat on this site
- BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, for tile and stone setters and for labourers, adjusted to your metropolitan area. Retrieved 2026-08-20. Benefit load from BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation. ⚠️ Tile and stone setters are published for only 141 of the 530 areas in our index — the thinnest coverage of any occupation we use, on the one page where it is the entire job. Outside those 141 the hour comes from the broader construction group for the same area. That is a real approximation and we would rather say so here than have you find it in a footnote.
- Cutting tile is regulated work
- OSHA 1926.1153, Respirable crystalline silica covers respirable crystalline silica, and cutting or breaking tile produces it. The control is wet cutting and containment, and CDC NIOSH, Silica and countertop work sets out why it matters for the people doing it. A saw running dry inside your house is the single clearest signal you will get about the rest of the job. Both retrieved 2026-08-23.
- And in a house built before 1978
- Tiling rarely touches paint — until the baseboard comes off to tile under it, or a painted floor is scraped. Above the federal minor-repair threshold that brings EPA, Lead Renovation, Repair and Painting Program into play and paid work has to be done by a certified firm. ⚠️ Separately, sheet vinyl and its mastic from before the eighties can contain asbestos and should be tested rather than lifted — which is one real argument for tiling over an existing floor rather than removing it, and one of the few. Retrieved 2026-08-22.
- What natural stone actually commits you to
- $5,910 on this room with epoxy grout and sealing, against $4,088 in porcelain. The premium is not only the material: every piece is a different thickness, so each is bedded individually rather than screeded flat, and the batch is laid out dry first to sort the colour. ⚠️ And the sealing is not once — every year or two for the life of the floor. A stone floor that has stopped beading water has stopped being sealed.
- Material prices
- Modelled estimates, not sourced prices. No public, machine-readable source of US residential material prices exists, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise. Each line carries its own uncertainty band. How we estimate them.
Contractor overhead and profit applied at 33–43% over direct cost. Data last reviewed 2026-08-23.
What this figure does not include
- A floor that is not flat enough
- The substrate lines here assume an ordinary floor. A floor with a real dip, a sloping old house or a large-format job over an uneven subfloor needs a self-levelling compound first, and that is priced by the bag and the hour once somebody has put a straightedge on it.
- Waterproofing a shower
- Tile is not waterproof and grout is not waterproof; the membrane behind them is. A shower needs a full waterproofing system under its tile and that is priced by our walk-in shower calculator, not here.
- Underfloor heating
- An electric mat or a hydronic loop goes in between the substrate and the tile, needs its own circuit and thermostat, and has to be decided before anything is bonded down. Retrofitting it means lifting the floor.
- Everything at the edges of the room
- Removing and refitting a toilet, cutting doors down to clear a raised floor, and new baseboard or thresholds are all real work that a tiling job creates and none of it is priced here. Tiling over an existing floor makes all three more likely.
- Asbestos and lead beyond the tiling
- Sheet flooring and mastic from before the eighties can contain asbestos and must be tested rather than lifted. The lead-safe line covers pre-1978 paint disturbed by the work itself.
Questions people actually ask
How much should I expect to pay for tile installation?
Between $18 and $34 a square foot in Atlanta, and the spread is the answer rather than a hedge. $18 is setting porcelain over a sound concrete slab with nothing to take up first. $28 is the same tile over a timber floor with the old surface removed and cement backer board put down. $34 is mosaic, because a 2-inch tile has 144 times the pieces per square foot of a 24-inch one and every piece is placed by hand. Two quotes for the same room that differ by nearly double are usually not disagreeing about the tiler. They are disagreeing about what goes underneath.
How much would it cost to tile a 12x12 room?
About $4,088 in Atlanta for 144 square feet of standard porcelain over a timber subfloor, including taking up the old floor, cement backer board, edge trim and the grouting — a range of $2,755 to $5,422. Over a concrete slab the same room is $3,585, and setting alone with nothing to remove is $2,543. Those three numbers are for the same tile and the same tiler. What separates them is roughly 36% of the bill: the demolition and the substrate.
How much to lay 1000 sq ft of tile?
About $23,856 in Atlanta over a timber subfloor with backer board — $24 a square foot, against $28 for a single 144 square foot room. The rate falls with area because setting up, protecting the route in and getting the materials there cost the same whatever the size. At this scale two other things start to matter: the tile has to be ordered in one batch, because two batches of the same product are not the same colour, and a floor this large will need movement joints, which are a real detail rather than an optional one and are not priced here.
How much does Home Depot charge to install tile?
We do not publish other companies' prices and would be guessing if we did. What is worth knowing is why a big-box tiling quote is hard to compare with a local tiler's: it is usually a per-square-foot installation rate with the substrate work priced separately or excluded, and the substrate is the part that swings the total. Take any quoted rate and ask three questions — is taking up the old floor in it, what goes down over the timber subfloor, and what happens where the tile meets a doorway. On this model those three items are the difference between $18 and $28 a square foot.
Taken from Google’s “people also ask” results for this search on 23 August 2026, not invented.
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Every unit price, every quantity rule and the reasoning behind each estimate, as a plain table.
- How we calculate
The formula, the sources, and an honest account of which parts of the model are weak.