Wood Flooring Over Tile

Wood Flooring Over Tile — modern flooring photography

Q: I have bought a house in Bella Vista, Arkansas. I would like to use engineered wood floors over the existing white ceramic tile. Can I do that or do I have to demolish the floor?. Second, can I use BR 111 engineered floor? if so, which one will be better, Dolomite or Triangulo? If neither one is good, can you advise that will be better over my existing ceramic title? I appreciate your expertise and thank you in advance for your response.
Sincerely,
Virgil W. Jackson
A: You can install a floating floor over tile as long as the tile is in good condition with no loose sections, but if you intend to do any other type of installation you will want to remove the tile first. The key to making this successful will be using a good underlayment. Keep in mind this means you will be raising the floor upwards of an inch or so. I would suggest using a 6mm cork underlayment here in order to get a nice dense underlayment that will hold up well over the tile. You may also want to lay down a moisture barrier to be safe, but its typically not necessary.
When installing over tile some folks will use a bit of self leveling compound to fill in grout lines if they are fairly deep, but if the difference in height from the grout line to the tile is minimal, this will not be needed.
For BR-111’s lines, the Dolomites (formerly called Casanova) is simply a different species selection with a 4″ board width whereas the Triangulo is either 3 1/2″ or 5″ in width. Personally I would go with the wider boards here and get either 4″ or 5″ (depending on what species fits your preference) as they are a bit more stable.
Another great engineered product you could look into would be Saso. Saso has quite a few nice exotics and the locking mechanism on Saso’s wider board makes installation very easy.
Let’s sum up: Floating floors will work over tile, but you will want to use wider boards and a very good dense underlayment. It might be necessary to use a moisture barrier or self leveling compound depending on the condition of your tile and depth of the grout lines.