Tileshop

Good people, products and prices.
I am a local contractor who runs a tile installation business. I use Tile Shop for all my rough materials (thin-​set, grout, sealer, ect.) I also like to recommend clients visit this location to find tile or get ideas about their own projects.
The staff is friendly and knowledgable. They have multiple locations though out the Bay Area and beyond. That is how they are able to offer reasonable prices on tiles.
I will definitely continue to be a loyal customer to Tile Shop in Berkeley for years to come.

Such friendly, helpful, non-​pushy folks here! We came looking for tile to re-​do our fireplace, but discovered they specialize more in bathroom/​kitchen tiles and didn’t have the decorative stuff we were looking for. Nonetheless, we browsed and the owner told us about the best type of tile for our specific project. Even though he didn’t have what we needed, he was happy to point us in the right direction and refer us to another shop in SF. It was educational, at the very least!
We walked away with warm fuzzy sentiments for this place and their staff — it’s rare when someone takes the time to help, even when there’s nothing in it for them. For such generosity and altruism, a solid 4 stars. Especially true if you’re looking for bathroom/​kitchen tiles. They seem like real nice, honest folks to work with.

When you first walk in workers are on the phone and barely look up at you. This alone, caused me to take a quick look and hurry up to leave.
I will not give my business to a place of people that cannot acknowledge me when I enter their place of business.

I am a contractor and use The Tile Shop for almost all of our needs. If you look at pictures of our completed jobs and see a very unique tile, it probably came from the Tile Shop
Philip Anderson
HDR Remodeling
Berkeley, Ca

This is the best tile shop in the Bay Area. It is a small store and everyone is very helpful. We are DIY so we need someone to help us with amounts and choices. They do this here and want to. They have some beautiful tile and all the other tools you need. If you need tile check this place out!

I really liked the color of the porcelain tile I picked out for my bathroom and I could not find the style/​lookI wanted at another location. I also really like their showroom — it’s top notch!
For that alone I would want to give 5 stars but I took 2 stars away for a couple reasons.
1. I’ve been in there about 6 times and bought from them twice — and each time it took more than a solid minute to be greeted (twice standing at the counter waiting while someone was looking down at their computer or paperwork not with another customer). I can go to Home Depot and get ignored there — but I like smaller shops and don’t mind paying more if its made up for in A+ service. This is actually the only real reason I took 2 stars away — service is so so so so important in a shop that has high prices — what else are you paying for? The quality of the product is not that far above Home Depot or Lowes — I just like supporting smaller businesses.
2. When I picked up my tile — they were very vague about where to pick it up (go around the corner) and I figured it out but definitely a bit of confusion — like… where is the sign — which port do I stand in front of? I stood outside waiting for about 10 minutes until someone came out with my tile and I was like, «oh good Im in the right place». Just put up a sign that says, «retail customers — pick up here» (cuz i know they have contractors too that pick up and probably know the routine). ALSO — when I picked up my tile — the guy that worked there was way too personal. Im a very personable person but he was asking me all kinds of bizarre questions like we were on a blind date or something. Creeped me out a bit but I wouldn’t lower a star for that — that’s just a side note.
3. They don’t take returns after 30 days as a strict policy. I can go to Home Depot for a strict policy.
Just to end on a good note — they do have a great selection and their showroom really is set up well and can give you good ideas of what you can do.

They have a great showroom. You can easily identify what will work for your project. The staff are friendly as they answered all of my questions and concerns. Also, they offer tile samples to take home which is great! Great inventory and promotional sale items. It’s a perfect stop to make for your next tiling project.

I can’t say enough about TileShop — they’ve consistently been my favorite vendor to work with during my time in the design field. Their salespeople are always quick to respond and helpful, both in person and over the phone. Claudia in particular has been a great key support person in numerous projects I’ve worked on over the years — from fast quotes and troubleshooting to great info about their stock, she’s been the best.
Their showroom is great — everything is installed and they carry most everything in stock, so you can go in with a good idea of what you’d like and stand a chance of walking out with it the same day, or soon after.
Can’t recommend them enough. What a great resource!

I went to a lot of home improvement related stores during my remodeling process and The Tileshop was hands down the best place I shopped. The staff there are very nice, knowledgeable, and helpful. They provided some suggestions on tile and grout colors. They are very professional. I found the most amazing tiler from their list of referrals so I highly recommend checking out the tilers they work with. I highly recommend the Tileshop. I even joined Unilocal just so I could write a review, I was that impressed with them. Check them out!

This could easily be a 5 star review based on ease of purchase and end result, but it started off disappointingly and left me feeling a bit cynical.
I called them about cream 3×6 Manhattan Subway tiles, and they said there would be a problem with the match between bullnose and regular pieces — that some people were able to accept the questionable match and others weren’t. We agreed I would have to come down and take a look for myself.
When I got there the situation was very different from what the desk person had described. In fact, all the cream Manhattan tiles, bullnose and regular, were decidedly grey. The office person readily agreed that they were all grey, and that it was this grey color that had been making people balk. Somehow this rendition was not in any way the same as the story she’d told about the ‘match’ issue.
I went ahead and bought them, but took them back the next day and paid for the difference between them and Riva tiles.
I’m happy with the Riva — but feeling a bit cynical about Tileshop.

We just completed our bathroom update and I’m thrilled with the results and the service from the Tile Shop. They provided free tile samples, recommended an excellent tile setter (Cathy Raingarden), and helped with color selection on the grout. Their warehouse is onsite and most of their huge selection is typically in stock. They also helped coordinate getting a particular grout color from their San Jose store quickly. The staff was super helpful in finding the right materials for the job without being pushy or intimidating. I’ve bought smaller selections of tile for other projects from Import Tile and I found their service to be lacking and the selections limited.

My name is Bruce Freedman. I am a tile and stone contractor and the owner of Tessera Tile & Stone. I have been buying my tile at Tileshop for over 25 yrs and I think of it as a main destination to send clients when they need helpful customer service and a showroom that is beautiful. In addition they also let people take samples of tile for free which in this day is rare. I have worked with Ted, Greg, Carlos, Juan and others in the warehouse, Nelson and Victoria in the front office, Chris French the outside customer rep has helped with installation questions, know Carl the owner by site (but not over coffee). What is striking is that there are people I have seen there for 20+ yrs. which bodes well for the general feel of the establishment and that people enjoy their job and are being treated well. I strongly recommend this business.

Very professional. The low key attitude is valuable where every project is different. Each one is a process and they know it takes time. I’ve never felt rushed. The sample walls are helpful. The unique styles are attractive. Definitely put them on your list of tile shops to try as you refine your design.

So, I described my project and the salesman immediately showed me three options on the showroom floor (all beautiful), and the proactively suggested we look at the product on close-​out to see if I could find something there and save some money! Wound up getting knowledgable and prompt service for maybe ~$ 100 more than I would’ve spent at Home Depot. Money very, very well spent for quick, painless, helpful service.

Nice showroom with great displays and ideas. Good selections include green products. Friendly and helpful shopping experience there.

Really great. Wish I’d known about this place earlier in the remodel process. Came in with an incredibly small (but very pressing) last minute order. Left 20 minutes later with exactly what I needed, at the right price. Courteous and friendly, but not pushy, service. (I think it’s one of those places where they leave you alone until you ask for help, which I kind of like. It lets me figure out what I specifically want to ask about on my own.)
No, not the cheapest tile place I have visited for this project (that dubious honor goes to Best Tile). And not the most exquisite selection (that would be Ceramic Tile Design). But absolutely perfect for what I needed. A lifesaver.

I am in the middle of a bath remodel, including a new tile shower. My contractor referred me to a couple of tile shops in the area, but i chose to work with Tileshop — they were friendlier and had a better vibe. Rhonda did a fantastic job listening to me, bringing out a number of samples, and laying them out against samples of my new vanity, countertop, and potential cork flooring. As a result, i decided to abandon the cork flooring, and took home a couple samples to see how they worked in the space. Within 48-​hours, i had decided, and was confident that I’d made the right decisions.
Between Rhonda’s feedback and guidance and my contractor’s creativity, I am looking forward to having my vision for the shower fully realized!
10/​14/​2011 — Well i learned today that the tiles i selected are all «bowed» — due to some manufacturing defect, they are all that way, so i cannot simply re-​order. I downgraded Tile Shop because I discovered that the owner/​manager of the store knew about this defect about one month ago, before I made my purchase, but did not communicate that fact to the sales people. In fact, this ‘cover-​up’ extended to whomever built the floor display — they were able to effectively conceal the defect by the way they laid out the display. My contractor suggested that he cut the tile in half to minimize the bowing effect, and i agreed since i still like the design and color of the tile and did not want to start from scratch. So 1-​star for management, but 5-​stars for the sales people.

i carried out about 600 pounds of tile away from the Tile Shop over the last few weekends. italian marble melograno mostly. i tried a bunch of tile places in the area. for some reason, berkeley and emeryville is just the hot spot for tiles in the SF bay area. but this one had some of the best selection. it’s medium sized. nothing huge but the tiles were high quality. this is not the cheapest place to get tiles and the italian marble is outrageous in comparison to the artificial stuff, but it’s good to have a solid selection of nice looking tiles when you’re doing a redesign. if you’re working on a budget the home depot is the best spot, i think, they have a pretty good selection and nothing is even a quarter the price of real marble. that said, the Tile Shop here, has a pretty nice selection of artificial tiles also, which apparently are easier to take care of as well.
also very important is that the employees were very cool about giving out samples that you could take home and were helpful when trying to make suggestions. the bad part is they close at 4pm on saturdays which seems, unfortunately, to be the norm for all stores like this. weird considering that most people would want to shop for this stuff on the weekend.

I’ve purchased from the Tileshop for several projects and have found them to be helpful and courteous whether I’m buying $ 2000 worth of tile or a $ 6 tube of sanded caulk.
Beautiful showroom and superb product. You can find quality at a good price here.

I had an incredibly crappy experience here recently. I don’t like to slam a local business, but really, customer service is one of the main reasons people patronize local shops rather than, say, the nightmare that is Home Depot. Their selection seems decent, although we had something specific in mind so we didn’t look around much.
My partner and I are in the throes of a remodel and needed to purchase tiles for the bathroom of our 1920’s cottage. Wanting to stick to a period-​appropriate look, we decided on those little black and white hexagon tiles and white subway tiles for the walls with a black stripe and a cap trim for the top of the wainscoting. Seemed pretty simple, and it’s a small bathroom. Over the past few months, we’ve stopped in to several places in Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco to locate these tiles, which turned out to not be as easy to find nor as economical as we had hoped (typical for the whole remodeling project, of course!) The «right» tiles were at Tile Shop, but the times we’ve stopped by in the past, not a single person has greeted us, offered to help us, or in fact even made eye contact. This should have been a red flag, but like I said, they had what we wanted, so last weekend we decided to go with our plans in hand so that we looked more serious. We were ready to buy and it should have been a simple matter and an easy sale for them. We walked in and there was one guy at the counter who was helping another customer. So we waited. And waited. After about 5 minutes passed and he hadn’t acknowledged our presence at all, in fact he seemed to be avoiding looking our direction, my partner asked if there was anyone who could help us. I mean, we don’t mind waiting, but c’mon! say hello at least– we’re not invisible! He replied that his coworkers were on break, and then shouted into the back room that he had customers. A woman came out and seemed extremely put-​upon that she had to help us. When we asked her some details about the tile we wanted she walked over to the display area with us, then promptly disappeared before we could ask her a question. It was downright weird, not to mention rude. We showed her our plans and she acted like it was crazy that our contractor wasn’t the one buying the tile (b/​c he’s cheap and lets us do some of the legwork!). She was also annoyed that we hadn’t figured out the exact amount of tile we needed– even though we had architectural drawings that were to scale. Plus, it seemed like she didn’t really understand how to look at the drawings and figure out the dimensions. I don’t know if we seemed too young, or not affluent enough for her, but she came across as a snob. Finally, we had enough and told her we’d go elsewhere. Then we walked out. Luckily, a nice woman in the parking lot gave us some great advice! She was also annoyed with Tile Shop and had witnessed our unpleasant exchange and said that she had a great experience at Art Tile in Oakland. So, Tile Shop, you lost $ 1500 worth of business as well as future business when we remodel the kitchen in a couple months solely because of the poor customer service we received. We’re confused by the other positive reviews and would have been more hesitant to post this one if we hadn’t been ignored multiple times, making it seem less like a fluke and more like a pattern.