Microcement vs tiles: the honest comparison.

We install microcement for a living, so you might expect this article to end with "choose microcement". It won't. Both materials have earned their place; the mistake is choosing on looks alone and discovering the practical differences after the grout has set. Here is how we walk clients through it.

Cost - comparable materials, different labour

Priced honestly - supply, adhesive, grout, trims and labour on one side; preparation, coats and sealing on the other - quality porcelain tiling and microcement land in a similar band for a simple room, with natural stone well beyond both. The difference is where the money goes. Tiling cost scales with cuts, borders and layout complexity. Microcement cost scales with substrate preparation and the number of hand-applied coats. A simple square room favours tiles; an awkward room full of curves, niches and level changes often favours microcement, because the material simply flows around them.

Joints - the practical heart of the matter

Every tiled surface is a grid of grout lines and grout is the part that ages: it stains, it darkens unevenly and in wet areas it is the first point of maintenance. Microcement has no joints at all. In a shower this matters twice over - nothing to scrub weekly and no joint lines for water to work at. It is also why microcement photographs the way it does: light moves across one continuous surface instead of being chopped into a grid.

Waterproofing - system versus components

Neither tiles nor microcement are waterproof by themselves. Tiled wet areas rely on a waterproofing layer behind the tiles, then trust the grout and silicone above it. A microcement wet room is waterproofed as a single system - membrane, base coats, finish coats and seal bonded together, which we pressure-test before finishing. Done properly, both work. But when a tiled enclosure fails it usually fails at a joint; a sealed microcement enclosure has no joints to fail. We have written up the full build-up here, because "microcement is waterproof" is the most damaging half-truth in this trade.

Disruption - the factor nobody prices

This is where the two diverge most sharply and it rarely appears on a quotation.

Retiling a bathroom means removing the old tiles. That is two to three days of hammer and chisel or an SDS, dust through the whole house whatever anyone promises about sheeting, a skip on the drive and a genuine risk of disturbing whatever the tiles were holding together - old plaster, a marginal substrate, occasionally a pipe.

Microcement over sound existing tile skips all of it. No strip-out, no skip, no dust and the room comes back several days sooner. In an occupied house with one bathroom, that difference is worth more to most people than anything else on this page.

Height and thresholds

Tile plus adhesive adds 10-20 mm. On a floor that means doors trimmed, thresholds rebuilt and on a level-access shower or an external door it can mean the detail no longer works at all. Microcement adds around 3 mm, which in practice means nothing has to move. On a refurbishment where floor levels are already fixed, this is frequently the deciding factor rather than a nice-to-have.

Underfloor heating and warmth underfoot

Both work over UFH. Microcement's 2-3 mm build-up sits closer to the heat source than a 10-20 mm tile-and-adhesive bed, so it responds a little faster - and barefoot, it never has the cold-slab feel of porcelain in winter. It does need the heating commissioned properly before application, which we have set out separately.

Wear, repair and age

Porcelain is extremely hard to scratch; a dropped pan will more likely chip a tile than mark it and a cracked tile can be swapped. Sealed microcement resists everyday traffic well and is refreshed by re-sealing every few years in hard-working zones; deep damage is repaired by hand, blended rather than replaced. Tiles look their best on day one; mineral surfaces develop a gentle patina that most of our clients consider the point.

One asymmetry worth understanding. Tile repair is easy if you have spare tiles from the original batch and hopeless if you do not - batches vary, ranges are discontinued and a near-match is worse than a mismatch. Microcement repair does not depend on stock: it is mixed to the colour reference on your handover sheet and blended in. Keep that reference and the surface stays repairable indefinitely.

Acoustics and feel

A large tiled floor is hard and reflective and a room full of it rings. Microcement is marginally softer underfoot and over a screed rather than a suspended deck, noticeably less resonant. It is a small difference in a bathroom and a real one across an open-plan ground floor.

Waste and environment, briefly

Overlaying tile rather than removing it keeps a substantial volume of material out of landfill and avoids the embodied energy of new tile, adhesive and a skip run. We are not going to pretend a polymer-modified cement with a polyurethane seal is a low-impact product in absolute terms - it is not - but on a refurbishment, not demolishing something that still works is the larger factor by a distance.

When we'd honestly recommend tiles

• You want pattern - zellige, terrazzo chips, printed encaustics. Microcement does tone and texture, not pattern.
• A hard-letting rental where trades may be replacing sections cheaply for years.
• Commercial kitchens with chemical-heavy cleaning regimes on a strict budget.
• The substrate is failing. Overlaying drummy tile or a cracking screed just buys a more expensive failure later and we would rather turn the job down than take it.
• Nobody in the household will ever wipe a spill. Sealed microcement is easy to look after and unforgiving of being ignored for years; glazed porcelain genuinely does not care.

The short decision guide

Everywhere else - bathrooms, open-plan floors, worktops, feature walls - seamless mineral surfaces are, in our clearly-declared-interest opinion, the better twenty-year decision.