A great tile installation is judged behind the tile and at the edges of it. Waterproofing, substrate, and movement accommodation decide whether it survives. Symmetry, tight cuts, and consistent grout lines decide whether it reads as finished. Martin Brookes, Fox Marble's Director of Installation and a veteran of more than 40 years in the tile industry, describes the alternative in a single line: a bad installation fails from day one.
A failing installation doesn't develop over time. It arrives finished.
Most people ask the wrong question about tile. They want to know how long a bad installation takes to go bad, as though a countdown is running behind the wall.
Martin removes the countdown entirely.
"Typically, a bad installation will fail from day one, so there's no usual time that it works for a while and then all of a sudden it fails." The phrase doing the work is from day one. It relocates the whole problem. The failure was not something the installation drifted into after two winters of building movement. It was built in before the grout cured, and what shows up eighteen months later is evidence reaching the surface, not the onset of anything.
That changes what a designer or GC should be inspecting for. Not durability. Sequence.
Failure is never one thing
The second correction Martin makes is to the idea that a failed installation has a culprit.
A failed install is not just one thing alone. It will be two or three components that fail simultaneously.
The components he names: a leaky shower pan, backer board that wasn't installed correctly, and omitted movement accommodation joints, the EJ171 detail in the TCNA Handbook that exists, in his words, "to allow the tile to flex and move with the building."
Sit with that last one. Movement joints are not there because the tile moves. They are there because the building does and the tile doesn't, so the assembly needs somewhere to absorb the difference. Leave that place out and the building finds its own.
EJ171 calls perimeter and field movement joints essential and required, and it puts them at every change of plane and at every structural joint carried through the substrate, seismic joints included. On Bay Area work, that last category is not a footnote.
This is why "which one thing went wrong" is unanswerable on a failed install. Two or three things went wrong at once, and all of them were decided at the same stage.
Everything behind the tile is what counts
Martin returns to waterproofing more than any other subject, and he frames it the same way every time. "Waterproofing is critical in any wet tile environment. The tile is just a durable decorative surface, so everything behind the tile is what counts."
Tile is not a water barrier. It is a wear surface. Grout is not a barrier either, it is filler between wear surfaces. The barrier is a separate system installed before both, and it is the only part of the assembly whose actual job is keeping water out of the framing.
When a client questions why the installation costs what it does, this is what Martin walks them to. Not a brochure. The open wall.
The tile is just the wallpaper. You are paying for the engineered system underneath it so your shower doesn't leak into your living room in five years.
On that walk he points at the three days spent sistering studs and skimming walls flat and plumb, and at the uncoupling membranes on the floor. All of it disappears under tile within a week. All of it is the reason the tile stays where it was put.
Which is where he locates the underlying mistake:
"People don't tend to care or want to invest too much money on things they can't see, and that is the biggest mistake they can make in any tile project." Spending follows the visible. Performance sits behind the visible. That mismatch is the failure mechanism, and no tile budget corrects for it.
What a great installation looks like when it's right
Everything above defines quality by what's absent. Here is the positive version, and it's all visible without opening a wall.
- Symmetrical layout. No thin awkward slivers of tile tucked into the corners. A sliver means the layout was started from a wall instead of centered, and once you know to look for it you cannot stop seeing it.
- Cuts tight enough to disappear. Around a shower valve or an outlet, the cut should be tight enough that the escutcheon plate, the trim ring covering the penetration, completely covers it. A plate that only just covers the hole is a plate doing a cutter's job.
- Directional stone that flows. In natural stone, veining and directional pattern should run naturally across the surface rather than colliding at every tile.
- Grout lines consistent in width and depth. Not just even spacing. Even depth, which is what makes a wall read as one surface instead of a grid of individual tiles.
None of these require a trained eye to verify. They require someone telling you which four things to look at.
The final walkthrough
Martin has a specific list he runs before he will call a job finished.
He looks for grout haze left on the tile face, the dull film that reads as dirty tile and is actually unfinished work.
He tests the shower pan by dumping a bucket of water into it and watching where the water goes. Not checking that the slope was specified. Watching it drain.
And he checks every change of plane. Every inside corner should be filled with a flexible sealant rather than hard grout. EJ171 permits 100% silicone, urethane, or polysulfide there; Fox uses color-matched 100% silicone.
That last one is the rule underneath one of the most common failures in tiled showers.
Grout does not belong in a corner
Grout should never be put in a corner and changing plane.
Corners and plane changes move. Grout is rigid and doesn't. Fill a moving junction with a material that cannot move and the result is predictable, which is why Martin reads a cracked joint more strictly than most people expect.
Even a cracked grout joint is a failure because it should not crack. That should be a soft joint.
A soft joint, in his description, is a flexible line of silicone sealant used wherever walls meet or floors meet walls, allowing the building to shift and expand without cracking the tile or grout.
Isolate the phrase should not crack. It rules out the entire category of normal wear. Cracked grout is not something that happens to tile over time. It is what happens when a rigid material was placed where a flexible one belonged.
"Correct" is a published document
Fox has been working in the Bay Area since 1986, out of a fabrication facility in Richmond, and installs to Tile Council of North America standards and ANSI A108 standards. That matters because it means "installed correctly" has a written definition that exists independently of any installer's opinion, and a third party can check work against it.
Martin sits on the ANSI A108 Committee and on the National Tile Contractors Association's Technical Committee, and he has chaired the NTCA's Standards and Methods Committee. He served as NTCA president from 2021 to 2023, and the association named him its 2025 Ring of Honor recipient. He also arrived at tile sideways, through masonry and then damp remediation, which is worth knowing about someone who talks this much about waterproofing. His argument for what that access buys is more useful than the credentials themselves:
I get to know what the failures may be moving forward, but also what best practices are.
Standards are written in response to failures. Being in the room where they are written means learning a failure mode before it arrives on your job site.
His contrast is with installers "just doing it the way they've done it 20 years without any formal training or any expertise in how to do it right."
Notice what he is not attacking. Martin has more than 40 years in the trade and does not offer that as his qualification. He offers the committee seats and the standards. Twenty years of an uncorrected method produces a practiced version of the same mistake, and a wall cannot tell the difference between a first-time error and a well-rehearsed one.
Tenure is a duration. Training is a credential.
The dry lay, in writing
Every decision described so far happens where the client cannot see it. One check does not.
We always do a dry lay, and we always want a sign-off from the client, homeowner, architect, or builder prior to installing tile.
The dry lay confirms the pattern actually fits what everyone has been looking at on a print or elevation, and that the texture, colors, and orientation of the tile match what the client pictured. The sign-off is always written, either an email confirmation with a photo of the dry lay attached or a signed approval form on site.
Written matters more than it sounds. A verbal approval and a photographed one diverge the moment someone's memory of a sample does.
Fox also stays out of the design seat when there is a designer of record. "We tend not to be designers when a professional designer is in place. We would let them make the call." The installer verifies feasibility and executes intent. The designer keeps authorship.
When it's already on the wall
By the time most people call Fox, they have stopped wondering and started worrying.
First thing is usually we get a call from a homeowner who's stressed because they know that it's wrong, but they don't know exactly what's wrong.
Martin has them text photos and reviews them live while they're still on the phone. The answer people least want is the one that comes back most often.
The tile cannot be saved. Once it's stuck to the wall, it's game over. You're buying the tile again.
There is no version of a tile removal that returns the tile. That is not a policy, it's adhesive.
Which is the real weight behind every visible marker in this article. A cracked joint at a corner, a sliver in the layout, water pooling instead of draining, all of them are reports on decisions made before anything could be seen. By the time you can evaluate the installation by looking at it, changing it costs the full price of the tile.
Every question worth asking gets asked while the wall is still open. Concerned about tile that's already been installed, or want a second set of eyes before the job goes further? Text photos to Fox Marble's tile installation team for a real time review.
Frequently asked questions
Does a bad tile installation take years to show up?
No. A bad installation fails from day one because the cause is built in during installation. What takes months or years is the visible evidence, like cracked grout, pooling water, or staining.
Is tile waterproof?
No. Tile is a durable decorative surface and does not act as a waterproof membrane. Waterproofing is a separate system installed behind the tile, and it is the only part of the assembly whose job is keeping water out of the structure.
Will sealing my grout stop water from getting through?
No. Sealer works as a stain protectant. It adds no value as a waterproof membrane and does not stop water intrusion.
Should there be grout in the corners of my shower?
No. Corners and changes of plane get a soft joint: a flexible line of sealant, usually color-matched 100% silicone, rather than hard grout. Those junctions move and grout cannot, so grout placed there will crack.
How can I tell if tile was installed well just by looking at it?
Check four things: the layout is symmetrical with no thin slivers in the corners, cuts around valves and outlets are covered completely by their escutcheon plates, directional stone patterns flow naturally, and grout lines are consistent in both width and depth.
What standards should a tile installer be working to?
Tile Council of North America standards and ANSI A108. Ask an installer directly which standards they install to. Unlike years in business, it is a checkable answer.