Tiling Courses for Beginners

Tiling Courses for Beginners

1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 Day Tiling Courses?

These are brilliant for a DIY person wishing to do their home. They’re also good as an introduction to the tiling game as a whole. They get you used to the tiling tools required to do a good job. Both trowels and tile cutters.

A short tiling course can also show you how to set out a bathroom or kitchen, and of cause floors too.

Tiling Qualifications Including Tiling NVQ Level 2 and Tiling City & Guilds Qualifications

Your general tiling qualification is the Tiling NVQ Level 2. This is the industry standard, and what would be required for you to get a CSCS Card to work on site as a wall and floor tiler. And not just a labourer.

Most sites will not allow you to tile bathrooms, kitchens and floors, without an actual wall and floor tilers CSCS Card. You will hear around that people have done it, but it’s not the way it will carry on. They’re cracking down somewhat on this. It’s more to do with the safety than the skills of the tiling. Apparently.

Wall and Floor Tiling Training Centres (Private)

Private training centres get a bit of flack. Or at least they used to. Time-serves wall and floor tilers don’t like them. “They push out rubbish tilers who then undercut us all on price and do a rubbish job” you might hear.

But to be honest, I know a lot of very good wall and floor tilers in the UK that started out years ago with just a short course in a private training centre.

Considering some tilers that are tiling right now, started off in the 70’s under the supervision of their father, or a friends father. They would be trusted to do more and more on the job. Eventually surpassing the expectations of the ‘teacher’. And perhaps going alone.

Never really having any formal training, being quite stuck to one sort of method. Struggling when now products and / or practices are launched or come out.

Short Course Guy – What’s he tiling like now?

The guy who has been on a short course when he’s in his 40’s having never touched a tile, will definitely be open to new ideas and quicker ways of doing things with better products. And will be in touch with the training centre still, and tile and adhesive manufacturer representatives. And of course tool manufacturer rep’s. Who are some of the most knowledgeable guys in the industry.

So I’m not sure. The guy doing a few short courses, then a few manufacturers courses, then doing his own testing and lots of researching, can be a brilliant tiler. And he only then needs to do some onsite assessment kinda route to get his NVQ if he needs a CSCS Card for site-work.

A guy coming fresh out of college with an NVQ could be as questionable. Which brings us onto…

Wall and Floor Tiling College Courses for Adults

Wall and Floor Tiling NVQs at a College are what we should all have access to when coming out of school. Or academies as they’re often called these days. But we aren’t. Local colleges to me don’t have any tiling courses of any kind. Whether day courses full time, night courses for those who work in the day, or weekend courses for those that can’t do either of the previous options.

As I said above, Leeds College of Building offer some of the best tiling courses. And the reason I know that is that a couple of the forum members are now something to do with their training, and I know that those tilers are very good at what they do.

Specialist Courses for Professional and DIY Wall and Floor Tiling

There are quite a few private training centres who offer specialist tiling courses. These will be offered perhaps after taking their initial course(s). These aren’t the type of thing that you’d want to enrol on without knowing anything at all about tiling in general. So the kinda of order of the courses would perhaps be as follows:-

  1. Introduction to Tiling
  2. Learn Basic Tiling Skills in 5 Days
  3. Advanced Tiling Courses
  4. Natural Stone Tiling Courses
  5. Tiling with Large Format Porcelain Tiles (often very thin porcelain tiles!)
  6. 1, 2, 3 and 4 week Wall and Floor Tiling Courses
  7. On Site Assessment NVQ / Qualifications – Or suchlike

TilersForums.com Tiling Training Sections That Can Help You

As I said at the start of this blog, we’ve been a part of the private training industry for a very long time in some sense. We used to support a training centre in the south, Able Skills, and before that Diamond Training – (the latter now defunct). One in the midlands, Chase Tiling Academy (also unfortunately now defunct), and then Construction Skills College Limited. And one in the north, UK Pro Tiling Training.

The three linked-to there have been going for a long time. They do short courses, but can also help you get your tiling NVQ should you need it. Not everybody does, it’s mainly for site-work. Though it’s a string to your bow if you’re trying to stand out amongst the many tilers that will be in your area competing with you.

Have a read of the following forums and threads on TilersForums.com:-