As promised, here is my full review of using the stick on tiles for our basement bathroom. I’ve been waiting to see how they held up. It’s now been about 2 months and they are looking great, still! (Easy to clean, too!)

We used the FloorPops brand and I have linked them at the end of this post since so many of you asked about this process so scroll down if that’s why you’re here. Feel free to leave a comment or reach out on social if you have questions!

Here are the things we liked about these. 

1. They are affordable. Our small room only took 40 tiles, which is 4 boxes, which was less than $50.
2. The are “easy” in that they don’t require trained skill to install.
3. They are also “easy” in that they don’t require major tools to install. We used a board to cut on, a box knife, and a hand plane, but you would really only need some kind of knife.
4. They are bold and fun. This can make a huge statement for a little amount of money. Like, this was THE thing that made this room transformation.
5. The adhesive is really strong and nice. That said, if you need extra adhesive, this carpet tape works great. (We had one tile spot that needed it because we needed to raise one side of the tile slightly to adhere to the floor.
6. They cut easily. You don’t have to cut them all the way through–scoring and folding is really the way to go for straight cuts.
7. They come in small quantities so you don’t have to do a big room to make this feel accessible. You could do a tiny bathroom or a big kitchen and just buy the number of boxes you need, no big deal.
8. They aren’t overly heavy. We have a couple boxes of old “real” floor tiles that are leftover and they are SOOO heavy to move.
9. They are one-foot square which makes them easy to measure, plan and handle. We talked about buying a sheet of linoleum, and still might for a different bathroom…BUT, that would be WAY harder to manage and wrangle for the install. This is bite size, you might say.
10. They are fast. It wasn’t SUPER fast, but it only took us about 3-4 hours total, and we had A LOT of complicated cuts. There was no drying time the way normal tiles would have, and then no grout drying time, too.

I’ll get into my “cons” list in a bit, but before, a few notes I think you need to know.

First, the installation instructions say to start in the middle of the room. They go into detail about finding the center of the room and working out from there. That is probably a good idea. But…we didn’t do that.

For a couple reasons:

1. Wyatt didn’t think we needed to. It was a small room. We’d be fine. We were, but…this probably wasn’t the best reason.
2. We were concerned about our small, wonky little bathroom walls making the doorway look crooked if we had to make cuts on those tiles. This was an important reason for us, but I do get why they say to start in the middle.

Basically, we decided we’d rather have a nice “straight” line at the doorway, even if it made things harder later. And it did make things harder. We regretted that choice a few times, although the finished product honestly looks pretty good. It just meant that our rows were slightly crooked and we ended up trimming a few of the “full” tiles in the middle to correct that a bit. And when I say “trim” I mean it. Wyatt used his hand plane to literally shave off slivers of them to make the lines slightly more straight.

You would NOT want to actually “cut” any of those middle tiles. That would look super weird.

The number one problem we had with installing these is that they aren’t all printed exactly the same. This is a big pain in the rear. Especially because the pattern we chose wasn’t super forgiving.

I’ll say it again. It’s a pain, literally, to install these when they aren’t all the same because you have to pay very close attention to choosing a tile that lines up with the tiles nearby. All of this happens on your hands and knees and starts to hurt out-of-shape bodies. But, if you don’t take the time to do it, (Ahem, Wyatt!) you’ll end up with seams that look like this. Or worse.

Seriously, if you want them to look nice, you MUST take the time to try SEVERAL tiles each time you are ready to install a new one to get them to look as best they can.

Even with this painstaking process, not all of the seams are perfect. But as my family would say, “it won’t be noticed on a galloping horse.”

(If you don’t know what that means, I’m sorry.)

Also, one other thing we learned is that it is good to allow for overage.

We didn’t.

We knew we didn’t, and we knew that was a risk.

But…budget, people. Budget.

So we ordered just enough.

And ended up with one mistake–that led to cutting a tile that couldn’t be reused anywhere else. Which then led to being one tile short. Which led to using the closest scrap piece we had and creating a patch with other scrap. Which led to this:

Can you see it?

I know, it’s behind the door, and I just admitted it to you all, otherwise NO ONE would have ever noticed…right?

But the point of this post is to share my honest thoughts, so yea. There ya go. Our little secret is out. Kinda like this little gap in between the tiles, which I’ll get to in a minute.

#ReviewSpoiler? Sorry.

Anyway, a couple other negative thoughts to share about these before we recap.

1. They aren’t all perfect. We had two of our 40 tiles with little chipped corners. Ideally, we would use one of those as a cut tile on an edge, but in our case, we didn’t have enough overage to be too choosy. Those little dings were less noticeable that using a tile that didn’t line up perfectly.
2. They are a bit messy. Some of them had the backing folded in a weird way that was sloppy and the adhesive had gotten on the one on top or below it. Nothing some goo-gone couldn’t fix, but it was still annoying.
3. The paper backing overhangs the tiles and can be a bit annoying when checking to make sure they line up perfectly. We found it helped to sort of flip/fold the tile to get that out of the way, without pushing/pulling on it so much as to actually peel off the backing. Sort of like a motion you’d use to swing your head to get hair out of your face, or Wyatt said sort of like spreading jelly on bread…. Does that make sense at all? Someone tell me if I’m talking crazy.
4. If you aren’t super careful, you may end up with a gap between tiles, as seen above. Now, this is NOT very noticeable when you are standing up or just using the room normally, but with a closer look, you’ll see it for sure. For us, this happened when we were paying more attention to the pattern lining up than the edge of tile. That’s fine at first, but eventually, a few tiles later on down the line, you’ll start to see that you have to adjust back to avoid getting farther and farther off. So, yea, we did that a few times and ended up with a gap to correct it.

Here’s the thing. It’s a LOT better. But it isn’t perfect. And it isn’t crazy easy or anything. But…it IS very affordable. We did our whole bathroom for less than $50. Which was amazing considering how bold and fun it is. (Not your builder basic linoleum sheet from the big box store–and again, no major tools or hassle to install.)

And it does look good!

I mean, would I want it to be closer to perfect? Yes, that’s who I am as a person. But, we knew it wasn’t going to be perfect when we started it. They are peel and stick laminate tiles. When you’re actually tiling, grout hides a LOT of imperfections. And the price for these totally reflects that imperfection. So, for the price, it’s such an improvement! SO WORTH IT!

And yes, I would TOTALLY do this project again.

Also, I should note that we cleaned our old laminate floors with ammonia to remove any wax/residue/etc. from them to get good a good stick! Worked great! (Just dilute with water and wear a mask!)

If you want to try it yourself, here is the link from Wal-Mart for our exact tiles.

If you were nervous, you might be mindful and choose a more forgiving pattern, or buy more extra so you don’t have to be so careful of not wasting any. But I still love this pattern because of the hexagons…and they are just such a fun, bold, look!

Of course, if this one isn’t for you, there are a lot of really great designs to choose from, too! These are a few that we considered because they fit the black and white contrast-y look we were going for, but there are tons of others, too! (I love the ones that look like mosaic tiles! There are some blue and tan ones that remind me of a really lovely resort we stayed at on our surprise trip to San Diego!)

If you try these, be sure and share your before/after pictures with me on social media! You can find me on Instagram or Facebook.

What do you think? Have you ever used stick on tiles? What did you think?