How to Drill into Tile to Avoid Cracking

Brief 

Looking for advice for drilling into tiles in your bathroom or kitchen? Try these tips from our DIY expert to avoid cracks and ensure your drill is up to the job.

Insight

Drilling into tiles is relatively easy when you use the right tools, but it has the potential to cause issues if it goes wrong. There’s a small chance that you could cause a crack in a tile, meaning it’d need to be replaced, while incorrectly placed holes can’t be filled and painted in the same way that they can on a plastered wall.

However, drilling into tile will be unavoidable in some instances, such as where you need to hang a mirror or shelf on a tiled wall, or for fitting a shower enclosure or screen over a bath. Larger holes will also be required when tiling a bathroom to fit around pipes.

It’s possible to drill tiles both before installation and when they’re on the walls, largely this will depend on when and why you need to drill holes.

Arm yourself with your best cordless drill and a few other supplies and follow our DIY step by step guide, plus some expert tips to try to ensure you get a good initial catch on a glossy tile surface and how to drill larger holes in tiled walls.

What Drill Bit do you use for Drilling Into Tile?
Drilling into tile requires a specialist drill bit, but there are a few options open to you depending on the type of tile you’ve chosen. This mostly boils down to a difference between natural stone and porcelain vs ceramic tiles.

Carbide tipped drill bits are the cheaper, more widely available of the two, however, they’re only really suited to softer ceramic tiles. Carbide drill bits for tiles tend to be spear-shaped.

Diamond tipped drill bits are more expensive, but can be used for drilling into the majority of porcelain and natural stone tiles. Diamond tipped drill bits tend to be circular with diamonds around the rim of the drill bit.