Short answer: order a sample before you order a job lot, read the rows on the product page rather than the photograph, buy the whole quantity in one order because shade and surface move between production batches, and be at home when the tiles arrive. None of that is particular to one shop; it is what makes it sensible to buy tiles online at all. The worked examples come from Tilekind's own product and policy pages, read on 14 September 2026.
Can you buy tiles online in Australia, and how do you tell a real shop from a page of photographs?
You can, and plenty of renovators and tilers do. The nervousness is reasonable: tiles are heavy, bought in bulk, and a colour that is wrong is wrong across a whole wall. Before you spend anything on any tile website, check that it lets you do six things.
- Order a physical piece of the exact tile, not a printed colour card.
- Read its dimensions, finish and material as written rows, not as adjectives in a paragraph.
- Open a published refund policy and shipping policy from the site itself.
- Look for a registered business name and an ABN.
- Pay through an ordinary checkout in Australian dollars.
- Reach someone by email about batches and quantities before ordering.
On this site those checks land on the tile samples page, on every product page, in the published refund policy and shipping policy, and on the contact page. If a site cannot show you all six, settle that before you look at colours.
Order tile samples first, and know what a sample settles
Every one of the sixty tiles listed here carries two purchase units: Standard and Sample piece. That held on all sixty listings when the product data was read, including three opened in full for this guide: a marble-look tile, a mosaic sheet and a subway tile. The tile samples page gathers them into a tray that holds up to five, and says plainly that the tray is a shortlist rather than an order.
A sample is one piece from one production run, seen in your light. That is a lot, and not everything.
| What a sample piece can settle | What it cannot settle |
|---|---|
| Colour in your own daylight and under your own lamps | The batch your full order will be drawn from |
| The face: gloss, matt, honed, polished, soft polished | How the whole field reads at three metres, with its joints |
| Texture, and how the surface takes a fingerprint or a water drop | How much the design varies across a full delivery |
| How the tile sits against your benchtop, cabinet doors and paint | Where the tile belongs; that is a product-record and installer matter |
The product pages say as much: a sample helps with colour and finish comparison but does not prove the exact batch appearance, and the sample tray adds that sample pieces may not represent the final production run exactly. Treat it as evidence about the design, not a promise about the pallet.
Once it is on your bench, Tile samples at home: how to compare colour, light and pairing covers what to do with it: where to hold it, what to hold it against, and why two whites beat one.
What to read on the product page before you order
Two blocks carry the facts. The short Product details list at the top of the description holds the dimensions and the finish. The collapsed Specifications panel repeats that list and adds a grid: product type, style or shape, material and thickness. Blanks are marked rather than filled — the page states that fields shown as "Not specified" are not stated in the supplier's current documentation for that tile. Read the rows in this order.
-
Size, or sizes. Some listings offer more than one format, and choosing is your job. Pietra Alba Marble-Look Tile lists
Sizes: 600 × 1200 mm; 600 × 600 mm— two formats, two very different walls. -
Finish. The same tile can be listed in more than one face. Pietra Alba records
Finish: Polished or matt; Studio Chalk Subway Tile recordsFinish: Gloss. Decide before you add to cart, and write it on the order. -
Thickness and profile, where recorded. Studio Chalk records
Thickness: 8 mmandProfile: Flat. Your tiler will want both. -
Material. In the grid this reads a material or "Not specified". Carrara Hexagon Mosaic Tile and Studio Chalk both read
Ceramic; Pietra Alba readsNot specified. A blank is an absent record, not a hidden answer. - Anything reading "Not specified". Note it, and ask about it before the order goes in rather than after.
What to confirm before choosing goes through the same rows in more detail, including which ones are commonly blank across the range.
On a mosaic, sheet size and piece size are two different numbers
Mosaics are sold as sheets, and the listing can record both dimensions. Carrara Herringbone Mosaic Tile records Sheet size: 316 × 277 mm and Piece size: 21.5 × 71.5 mm. The first is the sheet you handle and lay; the second is one chip on it. Eleven of the sixty listings record a sheet size and ten a piece size, so on some mosaics only one is on file — Carrara Hexagon Mosaic Tile records a sheet size and no piece size.
This matters when you work out quantity. The tile calculator asks for the dimensions of one full tile or sheet, not the small chips on a mosaic sheet, and reminds you to check whether the stated piece size includes the grout joint. Feed it a chip dimension and the answer is wrong by an order of magnitude.
Batches and shade variation: buy the whole job in one order
Tiles are made in production runs, and colour and surface move between them. Every one of the sixty product pages here carries the same sentence: "Shade and surface variation may occur between production batches. Review a current sample before final selection." The refund policy draws the practical conclusion: order the full quantity for your project, including your cutting allowance, in a single order, and treat batch variation as a normal characteristic of tile rather than a fault. In practice:
- Work out the quantity, add the allowance your tiler asks for, and place one order. A second order a fortnight later can come from a different run.
- Keep the spares from the same delivery. A repair in five years is made from that pile, not from a fresh order.
- Keep the sample piece until the job is finished, so the delivered tiles can be held against it before they go on the wall.
- Photograph the carton labels on arrival. Whatever run or shade reference the supplier prints sits on the packaging, not on the website, and once the cartons are broken down it is gone.
Each product page repeats it: view a physical sample in the actual room light, then confirm the supplied batch before installation.
Working out how much to order
Quantity is a separate job with its own guide: How to measure a mosaic project sets out the method and the record to keep, and the tile calculator does the arithmetic once you have the surfaces and an allowance your tiler has agreed.
Checking the delivery when it arrives
How delivery works is set out on the delivery page and in the shipping policy; read both before you order rather than at checkout.
On the day, before anything is unwrapped or moved into storage:
- Count the cartons against the order confirmation.
- Photograph the outside of the delivery, the packaging and the identifying labels.
- Open one carton and hold a tile against your sample, in room light.
- Photograph anything broken or wrong, once wide and once close, and note the affected quantity.
The refund policy asks you to inspect the order when it arrives, and the returns and damage page turns that into a summary you can email. Do not cut or lay a tile you think is wrong; that is how the evidence survives. What your rights are when something arrives damaged, faulty or not what you ordered is a separate subject, and this guide is not legal advice — Your rights when tiles arrive wrong sets it out against published guidance.
What to keep
- The order confirmation and reference, in an email you can find again.
- The sample piece, labelled with the product name, the size you chose and the finish you chose.
- Photographs of the carton labels from the delivery.
- A photograph of the sample beside a delivered tile, taken in the room, before installation.
- The spare tiles from that delivery, stored flat and dry, and a note of the allowance your tiler agreed.
Common questions
Can I trust a tile shop I have never walked into?
Judge it on what it will show you, not on how it looks: a physical piece of the exact tile, written dimension and finish rows, a published refund and shipping policy, a named trading entity with an ABN, and someone who answers an email. A shop that hides any of those is the one to leave.
Do I still need tile samples if the photographs are good?
Yes. A photograph is a lit, retouched image on a screen nobody has colour-calibrated, and it cannot show texture or how the face behaves at the angle you will see it from. The samples page notes the same limit: its photographs show products, not sample-piece sizes.
Will the tiles that arrive match my sample exactly?
Not necessarily, and every product page says so. Shade and surface variation may occur between production batches, so the sample tells you the design and the general colour; the delivered batch is confirmed by holding the two together before installation.
What if I run short and have to order more?
A later order is not guaranteed to match the earlier run, which is why the advice is to buy the whole quantity, allowance included, at once. If you must top up, order enough to finish a whole wall rather than patching into the middle of one, and compare the new tiles against the old before they go down.
Where these facts come from
The purchase units, product-details rows, specifications grid and batch sentence were read on 14 September 2026, in full on four product pages and across all sixty listings for the purchase units and the batch sentence; the delivery, returns, samples, calculator and policy statements on the same date. Nothing here is a performance claim or a statement about where a tile belongs; those go back to the product record and the installer.
Where this guide sits: Where to start sets out the order the guides follow.