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How to choose a tiler in Cyprus

What a Cyprus tiling quote should itemise, which registrations you can actually check, and the substrate questions that decide whether the floor lasts.

8 min read

How to Choose a Tiler Company in Cyprus — illustrasjonsbilde

Photo: cottonbro studio on Pexels

ByStavros Loizou· Editor, kitchens, bathrooms and finishes

Stavros covers the rooms that carry the most cost per square metre and the finishes that go into them. He tracks the order trades have to arrive in, which moves a Cypriot renovation bill further than any hourly rate does.

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You cannot check whether a tiler lays a level floor until they have laid one. What you can check, before any money moves, is whether the company exists, whether it carries insurance that is in force, and whether the quote in front of you describes what happens underneath the tile rather than only the tile itself. That last point does most of the work here. Tiling jobs in Cyprus rarely fail at the surface. They fail at the substrate, at the movement joints, or at the waterproofing that was left out to keep a price competitive.

What can actually be verified

Three things are checkable in an afternoon, and none of them require you to know anything about tiling.

The company exists and has a trading history. The Registrar of Companies is public, so you can confirm the legal name, the registration number, the incorporation date and whether the company is in good standing. Trading names and registered names often differ, which is normal. A registered name belonging to an unrelated business is not.

The business is VAT registered and will issue a proper invoice. This matters less for the tax position than for what it implies: a company that invoices properly has a paper trail you can point at if the floor lifts in eighteen months. A price that only holds if you pay cash removes your only evidence that the job happened.

Insurance is in force on the dates you need it. Ask for the certificate, not a statement, and read the expiry date. Tiling generates water, dust and heavy pallets in occupied buildings, and in an apartment block the party most likely to suffer is the flat below.

Registrations that matter

There is no professional chamber that licenses tilers the way ETEK licenses engineers and architects. Anyone searching for a licensed tiler in Cyprus is looking for something that does not exist as a single certificate, which is precisely why the checkable items above carry more weight than they would in a regulated trade.

What does exist is worth knowing:

  • Company registration. Publicly checkable, and the incorporation date tells you how long the entity has existed — not how long the person has been tiling, which is a different question worth asking directly.
  • VAT registration and invoicing. Confirms the business is operating inside the system rather than alongside it.
  • Employer registration for social insurance. If a crew of four turns up, they should be employed by someone. Ask who.
  • Public liability insurance. The only thing standing between a burst feed pipe and your neighbour's ceiling.
  • Manufacturer training on specific systems. Adhesive and waterproofing manufacturers run installer training. It is not a licence, but a tiler who names the system they are certified on is telling you something real.

Where tiling sits inside a larger job — a full bathroom rebuild, a terrace reconstruction — the main contractor above the tiler carries registration obligations of their own, and the general building pages cover that separately.

Questions to ask

The questions that separate a considered quote from a guess are all about what is under and around the tile.

  1. What is the substrate, and how do you know?

    In the 1970s to 1990s apartment blocks that dominate areas like Strovolos, the screed under an old floor is an unknown until the tiles come up. Ask what happens if it is hollow, cracked or falling away — priced as a variation at an agreed rate, or absorbed? A tiler who has never considered the question will say it will be fine.

  2. What waterproofing goes in, and where does it stop?

    Wet rooms, balconies and terraces need a tanking system applied to the substrate before any adhesive. Ask which system, how far up the walls, and how the junction at the door threshold and the drain outlet is detailed. Those two junctions are where most leaks start.

  3. Where do the movement joints go?

    Cyprus gives a tiled surface a hard time. Nicosia has the widest temperature swing on the island, and a south-facing terrace there expands and contracts every day of the year. External and large tiled areas need perimeter and intermediate movement joints and an adhesive with enough deformability to cope. Ask to be shown on a sketch where they will fall, because you will be looking at them afterwards.

  4. What tile format, and what flatness does it need?

    Large-format tile needs a flatter substrate and fuller adhesive coverage than small formats. If the floor is out of tolerance, either it gets levelled or the tiles lip at every edge. That decision belongs in the quote, not on site.

  5. Who supplies the tiles, and what is the allowance for cuts?

    Cuts, breakage and the spares you will want in five years all come out of the same order. Agree the allowance in writing, and agree who carries the risk if a second batch arrives in a different shade.

Ask, too, about access. On the hillside plots around Peyia, steep approach roads limit the size of delivery vehicle that can reach the door, and pallets that have to be broken down and carried are a labour cost somebody is paying for. In Polis Chrysochous, distance from the contractor base in Paphos shows up as travel time inside a day rate. Neither is unreasonable. Both should be visible.

What a good quote looks like

A single total with no breakdown cannot be compared with anything, and a tiler who gives you one has not priced the preparation.

Those ranges are read from our own records when the page loads rather than written into the text, so they do not go stale. What you are checking a quote against is the structure as much as the number:

  • Area in square metres, stated, with the method of measurement.
  • Removal and disposal of the existing floor, with tipping costs named.
  • Substrate preparation — levelling compound, primer, repair of failed screed — either priced or flagged as a provisional item with an agreed rate.
  • The waterproofing system by name, and the extent of it.
  • Adhesive and grout by type. Cement grout and two-part epoxy behave differently in a shower and cost differently.
  • Trims, profiles and thresholds. On coastal sites like Kato Paphos, salt-laden air is the reason to specify marine-grade or properly galvanised metal here rather than the cheapest profile on the shelf.
  • Movement joints and silicone perimeters.
  • Making good, cleaning and removal of waste.
  • VAT shown separately.
  • Payment stages tied to progress, not to dates.
  • A start date and a working duration, with a note on what happens if the substrate turns out worse than assumed.

Give every company the same written scope. Three quotes against three different assumptions tell you nothing.

Warning signs

Some of these are conclusive on their own.

A refusal to put anything in writing. A demand for a large deposit before materials are ordered, with no invoice against it. A quote that is dramatically below the others — that gap is nearly always the tanking, the levelling, or the labour of somebody who is not insured.

"You do not need to waterproof it, the tile is waterproof." The tile is. The grout and the substrate are not.

Tiling straight over the existing floor without checking whether the old tiles are still bonded. Sometimes this is legitimate and saves you money. It is only legitimate if somebody has tapped the whole floor and listened first.

Vagueness about products. A tiler who will not name the adhesive, the primer or the tanking system is either not choosing them or does not want you comparing.

Pressure to decide today, and pressure to skip the permit conversation on a terrace or balcony where the works touch the building envelope.

Finally, a company that cannot tell you which districts it actually covers. Tiling is local work, and travel is a real cost. The area pages exist so you start with people already nearby.

Common questions

Do the old tiles have to come up?

Not always. It depends on whether the existing floor is soundly bonded, whether the extra height clears doors and thresholds, and whether the room is wet. A hollow-sounding floor comes up. A sound one in a dry room often does not.

Should I buy the tiles myself?

You can, and many people do. The trade-off is that if you supply them, breakage, shortfall and shade variation between batches become your problem. If the tiler supplies them, ask to see the invoice for the order.

How long before I can use the room?

Set by the adhesive and grout cure times the manufacturer states, plus the cure time of the waterproofing underneath, not by when the tiler finishes. Ask for those figures from the product data sheet and plan around them. Loading a floor early is one of the few ways to ruin work that was done correctly.

Does underfloor heating change anything?

Yes. It changes the adhesive class, the movement joint layout and the commissioning sequence — the system has to be run up and down through a warming cycle before tiling, and again before use. Say at quotation stage that it is there.

Is a balcony or roof terrace the same job as a bathroom floor?

No. It is a waterproofing job with tiles on top. The falls to the outlet, the upstands at the perimeter and the drainage detail decide whether it works. Tiling is the last and least important part of it.

Does the price change depending on where I am on the island?

Access and travel move it more than district does. A ground-floor flat with parking outside is a different job from a third floor with no lift, and a hillside plot with a narrow approach is different again — same tiles, same square metres.

Tiling companies with verified registrations

5 companies covering this area.

Sources

  1. Department of Registrar of Companies and Intellectual Property — retrieved 2026-07-24
  2. Tax Department — VAT registration and invoicing — retrieved 2026-07-24
  3. ETEK — Cyprus Scientific and Technical Chamber — retrieved 2026-07-24

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