- Tub surround tile work: $2,000 flat.
- Kitchen backsplash tile work: $1,000 flat, labor.
- Tile floors: $3 per square foot labor, or $2 per square foot labor on jobs of 2,000 square feet or more.
Straightforward labor pricing and measuring your utility room floor
Our pricing for floor installation is open and simple to calculate before we even step into your house. Tile floors are $3 per square foot labor, and $2 per square foot labor on jobs of 2,000 square feet or more. These rates cover the labor to set, grout, and detail your floor. Materials such as the tile, grout, and transition profiles are separate, which means you pay for the exact products you choose without marked-up labor bundles. You can supply your own materials or visit the Temple supply house with us to select what you want.
Working out your square footage takes only a tape measure and a couple of minutes. Measure the longest wall in feet, measure the opposite width across the room, and multiply those two numbers together. For a laundry room that measures eight feet wide by ten feet long, your area is eighty square feet. If you have an alcove for an upright freezer, a deep utility sink recess, or a water heater closet, measure those small rectangles separately and add them to the main room total. When Genaro Merlan visits to review the site, we confirm those measurements so the final labor bill matches the actual floor space.
Why laundry rooms demand precise layout and square cuts
A laundry room might be one of the smallest rooms in your home, but small footprints leave nowhere for sloppy tile work to hide. When you walk through the doorway, your eyes drop straight down to the center of the floor and the edges along the baseboards. If a setter starts with a full tile against one wall without measuring the center, you end up with an awkward, pencil-thin sliver of tile on the opposite wall. We snap chalk lines from the center of the room to plan out the grid, making sure the cuts along every wall remain balanced, wide, and visually even.
- Checking the concrete slab or wood subfloor for dips and leveling high spots before mixing thinset mortar.
- Setting tile layout lines from the entry doorway so full tiles welcome you into the room rather than awkward off-cuts.
- Cutting smooth, tight openings around standpipes, sink drain stubs, and cleanout caps.
- Finishing doorways with matching transition pieces like reducers or thresholds where the laundry floor meets carpet or vinyl plank.
Tiling under washing machines versus stopping at the front legs
Homeowners often ask whether they should tile the entire room wall to wall or stop just short of the washer and dryer. We strongly recommend pulling the appliances completely out and tiling the entire subfloor. Stopping the tile in front of the appliances creates a raw, raised edge that traps lint, spilled detergent, and standing water. It also leaves your heavy washing machine sitting on a lower surface, which makes sliding the unit out for plumbing repairs or dryer vent cleaning a major hassle that can chip the front row of your new floor.
Setting tile under the full footprint of the appliances creates a flat, continuous plane. Modern front-load washing machines spin at high speeds and transfer heavy vibrations into the floor. When the floor underneath the feet is completely flat, solid, and fully bonded with proper mortar coverage, the machine stays balanced and will not walk across the room during a heavy spin cycle. Tiling the entire slab also means that if you change machine models down the road to units with a different depth, your floor looks finished and complete without any bare spots showing.
Managing floor drains, slope, and washer overflow pans
If your laundry room is on a second floor or includes a dedicated floor drain, water management is the most important part of the job. A washing machine drain hose can back up, or an intake valve can fail, dumping gallons of water onto the floor in minutes. When a floor drain is present, the tile around it must be cut carefully to match the drain collar. We notch and bevel the tile edges so water flows naturally toward the drain grate rather than pooling in the corners of the room or under the dryer cabinet.
Washing machine drip pans add another layer of protection, but they need a flat, stable surface to do their job. Setting the pan on an uneven tile surface can crack the plastic bottom when the washer drops its full weight of wet laundry into the tub. We ensure the floor tiles beneath the pan location are flat and level, with smooth grout lines that do not snag the pan feet. If your overflow pan connects to an exterior drain pipe through the floor, we cut the tile precisely around that pipe penetration to keep the floor clean and sealed.
Water protection at the wall with tile baseboards and sealed perimeters
Standard wood or MDF baseboards in a laundry room tend to soak up moisture from wet shoes, mop water, or small plumbing leaks, leading to swollen trim, peeling paint, and mold growth near the drywall. Replacing wood trim with a matching tile baseboard creates a continuous water barrier that protects the bottom edge of your drywall. We can cut down matching floor tiles or use bullnose trim pieces with satin or brass edge profiles to give the room a clean, finished perimeter that will never rot or warp when exposed to moisture.
The seam where the floor meets the wall is an expansion joint that moves slightly as the house settles and temperatures shift. Filling that perimeter seam with standard rigid grout causes the grout to crack and crumble over time. We leave a small expansion gap around the perimeter of the room and seal that joint with flexible, color-matched sealant before setting the tile baseboard over it. This allows the building to shift naturally while keeping stray wash water from slipping behind the walls and damaging the framing underneath.