The Best Tilers in New York

David Floricic, Pro Design, prodesignny.com

On a recent project, designer Jesse Carrier tasked Pro Design — a Queens-based company whose clients include Annabelle Selldorf and Robert A.M. Stern Architects — with replacing a cracked kitchen backsplash with ceramic subway tiles. (From $40 a square foot.) “The old tiles had to be carefully removed so as not to damage the surrounding countertops or cabinetry,” Carrier says. “And the new tiles had to be installed around some ill-placed electrical. It turned out perfectly — evenly laid with no evidence the job was challenging in the first place. They’re surgical.” Pro Design was architect James Wagman’s first call when he began work on the late Ethel Merman’s 3,400-square-foot duplex on the Upper West Side. The company carefully installed specialty Italian Carrara-marble tiles in the entryway vestibule, kitchen, and four bathrooms. “I was especially impressed with the slab bathroom,” Wagman says. “We had designed the marble bath to echo the Art Deco building’s interior, and they followed our drawings exactly. At one point, the slab had to be replaced entirely — they did that without a blink.”

Corey Seropian, Ararat Tile & Stone; araratbuilds@gmail.com

When woodworker Will Glaser bought a townhouse in Bed-Stuy last year, he’d planned to do the tiling in the two bathrooms himself. “It was all pinky-beige Home Depot tiles from the ’90s,” says Glaser. “In the shower, on the backsplash. We wanted to get rid of all of it.” But when he started, he realized it would be trickier than he thought — the previous owner had done a strange job with the bathroom renovation, and there were jutting walls and cabinets to work around. So he asked people in the renovation community and, through a friend of a friend of a friend, found Corey Seropian, a Brooklyn tiler. For the floor, Glaser wanted a black-and-white pattern, and for the backsplash, white subway tile. (Glaser bought both from build.com.) It took only two weeks for Seropian to finish both bathrooms entirely and, according to Glaser, perfectly. (From $10 a square foot) “Getting everything to fit in a way that looks clean and effortless is not easy. He had to cut a lot of the tiles to fit to the constraints of the room. But he made it work. We’ve since recommended him to a friend starting a condo renovation and another couple that wants to do a backsplash.”

SilverLining Inc., info@silverlininginc.com

Supertall building — towers that stretch over 90 floors — can sway four to six inches on a windy day. “The techniques for installing tile inside them is complicated,” Josh Wiener of SilverLining Inc. says. “It’s like an expansion joint on a bridge. If you didn’t have that, the bridge would crack.” With an engineer, Wiener’s team has developed a specialty technique to install tiles in supertalls that hold up over time and has since worked in essentially every building on Billionaires’ Row, including nine apartments in the 1,400-foot 432 Park Avenue. Gregory Dufner of Dufner Heighes design firm says SilverLining has done “impeccable” work on multiple penthouse projects for them. (From $$50 a square foot, which includes mud job and waterproofing.) “We have created custom patterns with stone — they quickly water-jet cut it for us, then install it,” Dufner says. In one Soho penthouse, SilverLining’s team installed white marble, a beige limestone, and a darker-brown limestone on a 200-square-foot bathroom floor to create a herringbone pattern, which lines up precisely with the neighboring herringbone-patterned wood floor in the living room. “Their work is completely flat,” Dufner says. “You can’t even tell that there is a grout line; it looks monolithic. And they’re obsessive: They make sure the joint lines on the tiles line up with the line of the stone base on the wall. Subtle things that make an enormous difference.”

Erica Padgett, Decorum Design Build, decorumdesignbuild.co

When Katherine Lewin started work on her dinner-party shop, Big Night, she knew she wanted a fair amount of tilework — at the very least a backsplash above the counter in the back of the store and tiled floors that worked with the bright-red color scheme. So she turned to Erica Padgett, a trained architect who oversaw projects for Soho House and the Wing before starting her own general-contracting firm. Padgett was instrumental not just in laying down the tile but in figuring out the design as well. (From $50 a square foot.) For the backsplash, she helped Lewin pick out square green, blue, and white ceramic tiles (plus “one single red one”) to create a “sort of ’60s mod” design. And for the floor, she suggested they go with inexpensive vinyl composition tiles — the ones used often in supermarkets and classrooms. “I’d have never thought to use VCT,” says Lewin. “But she found great colors: a neutral sandy color, a deep-deep-blue color, a really light yellow, and a sage-y green.” Afterward, Padgett went home and used software to lay out a configuration that was bright without being “too Christmassy.” The result: A dreamy checkerboard floor with just enough color.”