Large-format porcelain. Natural stone. Wet rooms. Underfloor heating. Seven years of millimetre-accurate work across Manchester, led by Kyle Knowles.
Kyle Knowles founded the studio in Openshaw in 2018 with one rule: no tile leaves the job until it would pass inspection from every angle — close up, across the room, and in raking light. Seven years in, that standard hasn't moved.
The work is deliberately narrow. Large-format porcelain — the 1200x600 and 1600x800 panels that most local tilers won't touch. Book-matched natural stone. Wet rooms built to BS 5385 with fall-formed substrates and vapour-tight membranes. Underfloor heating installed and commissioned as a JK-GB approved partner.
Kyle works directly on every project. There is no sales team, no sub-contracted labour, no compromise on the finish. If you're after a tradesman who will quote fast and disappear, this isn't the studio. If you want a tiler who treats a bathroom wall like a piece of architecture — call.
1200×600, 1600×800 and panel-grade porcelain installed with suction-frame handling and vacuum-lift substrate prep.
Marble, travertine, slate and limestone. Book-matched layouts, sealed, honed and finished to order.
Fall-formed substrates, fully vapour-tight membranes, linear drainage. Built and warranted to BS 5385-4.
Full electric and wet-system UFH installed, tested and commissioned as a JK-GB approved installer partner.
Full bathroom refurbishments or tiling-only within an existing renovation. Walls, floors, shower enclosures, niches.
Full-height splashbacks, island end panels, open-plan floor runs. Coordination with your kitchen fitter or designer.
Level screeds, decoupling membranes, porcelain and stone floors set out for continuous runs across multiple rooms.
Feature walls, hallways, stair risers, fireplace surrounds. Straight-line setting out with pin-sharp grout lines.
"We had 1600x800 porcelain panels installed across our master en-suite. Three tilers quoted and either wouldn't touch the size or wanted us to compromise on the layout. Kyle set it out, dry-laid every panel, and the finish is flawless. Lippage is literally undetectable."
"Kyle installed underfloor heating and a book-matched marble floor in our open-plan kitchen. The seam-matching is exquisite — it reads as one slab walking across the whole room. He's a genuine craftsman and the project ran exactly to his programme."
"Our wet room conversion was the third bathroom Kyle has done for us. He took the floor back, set the falls properly, tanked the whole space and finished in large travertine. Zero leaks, zero callbacks, and grout lines straight enough to draw on."
"We asked for a JK-GB approved installer specifically — Kyle was recommended by the manufacturer. Electric UFH commissioned perfectly, porcelain floor laid over the top, grouted and finished. He's on site at 7am, packs up clean every night."
"Kyle did our full kitchen and utility — 1200x600 porcelain on the floor, a full-height splashback in natural slate, and coordinated the whole sequence around our kitchen fitter without a single clash. The detail at the door thresholds and the splashback reveals is better than any tiler I've had on a job in twenty years of renovation. Genuinely worth the wait for his diary."
Yes — large-format is a core speciality. We install 1200×600 routinely and handle 1600×800 and panel-grade porcelain up to 3m using suction-frame tooling and dedicated substrate preparation. Every large-format job is dry-laid and set out before any adhesive goes on the wall or floor, and we use a lippage-levelling system to hold a tolerance of around ±1mm across panels.
Yes. We are a JK-GB approved installer partner and fit both electric-mat and wet-system underfloor heating. The sequence is: screed or self-levelling compound laid to the correct thickness, UFH installed, tested and electrically commissioned or pressure-tested, decoupling membrane applied over the top, then tile installation. Handing the whole process to one installer removes the finger-pointing if there's ever a snag.
For most bathrooms — particularly anything with UFH or a wet-room floor — porcelain is the right answer. Porcelain is fired at higher temperatures, has a water absorption below 0.5%, and is through-body coloured, so a chip doesn't expose a different substrate. Ceramic is fine for walls in a low-traffic area but we rarely specify it for floors or shower enclosures. Natural stone sits separately — beautiful, but it demands correct sealing and ongoing maintenance.
Every wet room we install is built to BS 5385-4. That means a formed fall-board substrate, a fully vapour-tight tanking membrane (typically a liquid-applied or matting system with taped corners and pipe collars), a tested linear drain, and only then tile. We water-test the tanking before any tile goes down. Done properly, a wet room should not leak for the lifetime of the installation — and we warranty the waterproofing accordingly.
The studio is based in Openshaw. The core service radius is about four miles — Droylsden, Ashton-under-Lyne, Ancoats, Manchester City Centre, Gorton, Denton, Hyde and the surrounding area. For larger projects or bespoke stone installations we will travel further into Greater Manchester. The best thing to do is call and describe the project — we'll be straight about whether it's a job we can do well.
Quotes are free. We'll visit the site, measure, discuss tile choice if you haven't decided yet, and return a detailed written quote within a few days. Wait time for a start date is typically three to six weeks depending on project size and time of year. For larger renovations we work backwards from the main contractor's programme and block the dates out months in advance.
Send through the shape of the project — tile choice doesn't need to be decided yet. Kyle will come back within one working day.