How to make your wood tiles look like a hardwood floor

SO how do you make sure that your wood tiles look like actual hardwood floors? 

There are many reasons not to install a hardwood floor; for us, it is because, with two young dogs, the floor would get scratched quickly. We needed something almost indestructible. In another house, we installed luxury Vinyl. It is easy to install and looked terrific. But here I wanted Kerlite. I fell in love with the color, the wide planks, and the quality is exceptional. It is a bit more expensive than Luxury Vinyl, so you want to make sure that you won't ruin it with your grout once installed. 

You still see it, renovators using a light grout between wood tiling. It immediately gives it away, and frankly, it is an eyesore. These days the grout is as advanced as your tiles. There are so many colors, so make sure you pick the right one.

You want to mimic the shadow that would form between your hardwood floor planks, so go dark. For Lighter wood, like the one we used in the living room, it is by Cotto d'Este, look at the grain. Pick the darkest color of the vein and use grout in that color. For darker wood, like the one we used on our balcony, you can use the same trick or go quite dark.

Voilà, that's it!


Oh and don't forget to let them 'throw' the floor, and by that I mean they should lay it like a parquet floor, in a 'random' way. The grout lines should not line up. You can find tons of tutorials how to lay a hardwood floor, and you should do exactly the same thing with your wood tiles.


So here is how NOT to do it: 







Now for a good example of a beautiful hardwood floor, look how pronounced the shadow between planks is of these Dinesen floors


Do wood tiles look like hardwood floors and how can you achieve the effect of hardwood floors


This is the tile we used, Cotto d'Este Woodland Atlantic. I highly recommend it: 



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