Any time you come to a point in the floor covering that presents a visible edge of the floor tile, to give the job a professional finish you should always insert a transition piece of some description. Whether it’s on a door connecting two rooms with different floors, or even around the edges of tile baseboards, a transition piece will hide the ugly edge of the tiles and the mortar or adhesive that holds them together, as well as give the tiles a final, cosmetic, smooth finish to the overall design.
Tile transition pieces are available in a variety of colors, sizes, shapes, materials, and styles, so as a quick rundown of what’s actually available without going into too much detail, I’ll briefly mention each option you should consider suitable for your particular tile project. Starting with your least expensive option, plastic transitions come in a wide variety of coordinating colors, perfect for coordinating your color scheme. However, being your most economical option, they can give your finished work a cheap look.
Since plastic is just plastic, it’s certainly easy to work with and trim to size, but I really don’t recommend using them for any tiling work. They’ll just take all the appeal of hard work and money spent on tile installation in one go, and to add a bit more to your budget, I’d advise purchasing metal transition pieces for a more professional and complementary finish. If you decide to spend a little more, you’ll definitely get a lot more for your money.
The metal transition pieces that I normally buy are made by Schluter Systems. They offer a wide variety of polished and polished metal finishes in colors ranging from bronze, platinum, silver, chrome, etc., and they are certainly of good quality and value for money. In addition to the many styles available, they also offer these transition pieces for a variety of applications and different depths to accommodate the thickness of your tiles.
With the nose transition, for example, this piece is ideal for tiling a flight of stairs. When the trimmed end is inserted under tile in a bed of fresh mortar, the oversized down lip extended into a nose transition will hide any visible subflooring, giving your steps a great clean finish.
Sloped transitions are ideal for when your tile floor is being transferred to a lower height floor such as vinyl or hardwood flooring, eliminating abrupt ends that trap feet. With flat butt transitions, they are used when transitioning to basically anything you want, including another tile floor. They are also great for finishing edges, such as tile skirting placed around the perimeter of the wall, and can give a nicer look rather than just a bead of silicone finish.
However, one important factor to consider when purchasing your transition pieces is the actual thickness of your tile. To give the perfect match, transitions are available in various depths to suit the thickness of the tiles, but you should always buy one that will remain slightly higher than the floor tile when attached next to each other. The reason for this is to always remember to offset the depth of the mortar bed, as this will surely raise the height of the tile by at least a minimum of 1/8 inch. This obviously depends of course on the thickness of the bed relative to the size of the notched trowel used for spreading.