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A small bathroom is the hardest room in the house to floor. You are working on your knees in a space barely wider than your arms, the toilet and basin are always in the way, and almost every tile seems to need cutting. Luxury vinyl tile is still a sensible choice: it is warm underfoot, hard-wearing and far more forgiving of splashes than laminate. What it is not is waterproof in the way ceramic is. Water that sits on the surface, or finds its way underneath, will eventually cause trouble, so the quality of your prep and sealing matters every bit as much as your tiling.
Measure the room properly, including the alcoves behind the toilet and under the basin, then decide which way the planks will run. In a narrow bathroom, running them along the longest wall usually makes the room feel wider. Running them towards the door gives you a neat line at the threshold.
Have a dry lay with a few tiles before you commit. It takes ten minutes and saves you from a layout that puts a thin sliver of a cut against the bath panel.
Everything else depends on this. Lift the old covering and check what is underneath. If your home was built before 2000 and there are old floor tiles or black adhesive down there, do not start sanding or chiselling — stop and get proper advice, as some older materials contain asbestos.
Screw down any loose floorboards and deal with squeaks. Fill wide gaps between boards with strips of ply or a flexible filler. Then either overlay with 6mm exterior-grade plywood or pour a self-levelling compound. Most LVT manufacturers expect no more than about 3mm of deviation across a 2m straight edge, which is tighter than it sounds. Check with a long spirit level before you go any further.
Prime the subfloor if your levelling compound or adhesive asks for it, and make sure the surface is completely dry, dust-free and free of flaking old adhesive. On a solid floor, use a surface damp-proof membrane if there is any hint of moisture coming up.
Bring the boxes into the bathroom and leave them stacked flat for 24 to 48 hours at normal room temperature. Vinyl expands and contracts with heat, and tiles laid straight from a cold van or a hot car will move once they settle. This is also the moment to check batch numbers match across boxes, because a different batch can be a slightly different shade.
Click tiles are quicker and need no adhesive, but in a small bathroom you will lose more to waste, and you still need a 5mm expansion gap all round, hidden under skirting or scotia. Glue-down LVT gives a more solid feel underfoot and handles the many awkward cuts around fittings far better. For most small bathrooms, glue-down is the easier job.
Use a resilient flooring adhesive suitable for bathrooms and spread it with the notch trowel the tub specifies. Work in patches of a square metre or so. Bathrooms are cut-heavy, and adhesive that has gone past its open time will not grip properly. If you are using a pressure-sensitive adhesive, let it flash off until it is clear and tacky to the touch before laying — usually around 20 to 40 minutes, but always follow the instructions on the tub rather than a rule of thumb.
The neatest result comes from removing the toilet. Turn off the water, flush and sponge out the cistern and pan, disconnect the supply, unbolt the base and lift it clear. Replacing a wax or foam seal is a small job, and it gives you a flat run to tile.
If the toilet is staying put, make a paper template of the base, transfer it to the tile and cut it in two pieces so they can slide around the waste pipe, then seal the joint carefully with silicone. The same approach works for a pedestal basin.
For pipes, drill a hole slightly larger than the pipe and cover the gap with a pipe collar or a bead of silicone. Leave a 2–3mm gap around pipes rather than cutting tight, so the vinyl can move. Undercut door architraves with a multi-tool or hand saw so tiles slide underneath instead of being cut around them.
Run a bead of sanitary silicone around the perimeter and around anything that penetrates the floor. If you have laid a floating click floor, leave the expansion gap clear and seal the skirting instead, not the floor itself.
Then be patient. Adhesive typically wants 24 hours before light foot traffic and longer before you refit and seal the toilet — check your product's data sheet. Keep the floor dry for at least five days before mopping, and use a damp mop rather than a wet one from then on. Silicone skins over in about 20 minutes but cures fully in around 24 hours, so keep the shower out of use overnight and leave a window or extractor fan running.
Work in short bursts, keep your blades fresh, and do not rush the sealing — in a bathroom, that is what keeps water out of the joints and the floor looking good years down the line. If the subfloor turns out to be damp, badly uneven or hiding old materials you are unsure about, bring in a professional before you lay a single tile. Everything after that is well within reach of a careful DIY fit.
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