London Stone Skirting Tile 152x152mm

The Skirting Tile is the bottom course of the scheme. Run along the floor line at 152 x 152mm, it carries the tiling right down to the floor and closes it there with a moulded top edge, so the wall reads as one built surface from skirting, through the field, up to whichever cap sits at dado height.

The practical gain is that the whole lower half can be wiped from top to bottom, which is why tiled skirtings were used in hallways, sculleries and bathrooms in the first place. It is supplied four to a box, covering 0.6 of a linear metre, at 6.6 pieces per linear metre.

The handed skirting corners are not stocked in this colour. Original Style make them in London Stone to order, against a minimum quantity and a lead time, so let us know where your corners fall as early as you can and we will get them booked in.

Yes. Artworks London Stone is rated for internal walls, wet and dry, so it is at home in a shower enclosure, on wet room walls, behind a bath and across a splashback. The gloss glaze is non-porous and needs no sealing, and routine cleaning is nothing more than warm water and a mild detergent.

The care in a wet area goes into what sits behind the tile. The background should be flat, sound and properly tanked before fixing, and the joints kept in good order afterwards. What London Stone is not rated for is a floor: it is a wall glaze throughout the range.

No. Artworks is a wall range, and a gloss wall glaze is not rated for foot traffic. Walked on it will scuff and dull, and it is not intended to be laid underfoot. Every piece made in London Stone, from the field tile to the smallest moulding, is for internal walls.

That need not limit the scheme. Tell us the room and we will suggest a floor tile that sits well beneath a London Stone wall. Call the team on 01344 620211, or come to the showroom at 67 High Street, Ascot, and we will put the two side by side for you.

There is a little variation between production batches, as there is with any glazed ceramic. It is slight, but two batches fixed on the same wall can read differently once the light falls across them. The safest course is to order the whole job in one go, and to ask us to quote the batch when we confirm it.

It is also worth keeping a spare box from that batch once the tiling is finished. If a tile is ever damaged, a replacement from the same batch will disappear into the wall, where one ordered several years later may not.

Fix with a white flexible adhesive. The grout is the decision that matters most on this colour: choose a warm grey, a greige or a soft putty, close to the tile in tone. Keeping the warmth in the joint is what preserves the aged, settled reading the colour is bought for.

Two choices to avoid. Brilliant white makes a colour whose whole appeal is that it looks long established suddenly look brand new, and it turns the wall into a bright grid. A cool or blue-toned grey does the opposite damage: it drains the warmth away and leaves the tile reading as merely grey, with the character taken out of it.

London Stone is usually in stock across all fifteen shapes we hold. Send us your quantities and we will confirm availability and a delivery date before anything is committed, so the tiling can be booked into the programme with confidence.

Delivery is free on UK orders over £1,000. You are also very welcome at our family-run showroom at 67 High Street, Ascot, where the Original Style range can be seen in person, or you can speak to the team on 01344 620211.

London Stone is the warm one. Original Style describe it as warmer than the other greys they make, and tie its vintage charm to traditional schemes taken to dado height. That warmth is its defining property, and it is why the colour reads as a surface that has been in the building a while rather than one laid last week.

Artworks runs to six greys and neutrals in all: Chancel Grey, Westminster Grey, London Stone, Charcoal Grey, Jet Black and Platinum. Of those, Westminster Grey is the neutral one and London Stone is the warm one. That is the useful distinction to hold on to when you are narrowing the choice.

Being honest about it, greys are very hard to tell apart on a screen, where photography and monitor calibration do most of the talking. Order samples of the two or three you are weighing up and look at them on the wall in question, in daylight and under the lamps you actually use. Cut samples are free to collect from our Ascot showroom, or posted to you for the cost of postage.

Fifteen shapes are stocked in London Stone: the Field Tile, the Half Tile, the Skirting Tile, the Plain Cornice and the External Corner Trim, together with ten mouldings — Victoria, Egg & Dart, Dentil, Rope, Scroll, Hogarth, Albert, Astragal, Sigma and Omega. All fifteen are held here, so a whole scheme can be drawn from one shelf.

Original Style additionally make a further group of pieces in this colour to order, subject to a minimum quantity and a manufacturing lead time: the Rectangle 152 x 25mm, the Round Edge Long and the Round Edge Short, the corner wrapping pieces, the Internal Corner, and the handed corner mouldings for the Omega, Astragal, Albert, Victoria and Skirting.

They are not on our shelves, but they can certainly be had. Tell us early in the design which of them your setting-out needs and we will price them, confirm the minimum and put a realistic date against them. Call the team on 01344 620211.

Yes. Cut samples are free to collect from our Ascot showroom, or we can post one to you for the cost of postage. Seeing the glaze in your own light is the surest way to judge how it will sit against your paint, stone and metalwork.

As a guide, add around 10% to your measured area for cuts and breakages, and nearer 15% for a herringbone, diagonal or brick-bond layout. It is also worth keeping a few spare tiles from the same batch in case a repair is ever needed.