Porcelain Patio Transformation, Dublin, Dublin

A patio is where a house meets its garden, so a tired one drags down everything around it. This Dublin patio had reached that point. The old cobble-lock paving outside the kitchen doors had faded, gathered moss and started to break up near the threshold. The owners wanted it gone and replaced with something clean, modern and low maintenance. Porcelain was the answer.

The brief

The paving outside the sliding doors was original cobble-lock that had done its years. The colour had washed out, moss had taken hold in the joints, and a section by the doors had lifted and worn back to bare ground. The owners wanted a surface that would look sharp against the white render of the bungalow and stay looking that way with almost no upkeep.

Why porcelain

Porcelain has become the surface of choice for a modern patio, and for good reasons. It is dense and non-porous, so it does not soak up water, stain or grow moss the way older concrete paving does. It holds its colour rather than fading in the sun, it stands up to Irish frost without flaking, and it cleans with nothing more than a brush and water. Laid well, a porcelain patio looks much the same in ten years as it does on the day it is finished.

The finish

The light-grey tone was chosen to sit against the white render of the house, and it does. A large-format tile keeps the joints to a minimum, which reads cleaner and gives the courtyard a greater sense of space. An exposed-aggregate border draws a tidy line between the porcelain and the surrounding ground and frames the new patio neatly.

The result

The old cobble-lock was lifted out and the new porcelain laid in its place. The change is hard to overstate. Drag the slider below to compare.

Why the base matters

A porcelain patio is only as good as what sits under it. Each tile is bedded on a full mortar bed over a solid, well-drained base, not spot-fixed on dabs, which is what stops tiles rocking, cracking or lifting over time. It is the same principle Paul Delaney applies to every surface the crew lays.

"The base is everything. If the sub-base is wrong, the whole thing fails inside three years."

Paul Delaney, Delaney Tarmac

Skip that groundwork and even the best porcelain will fail early. Do it right and it holds for the long run, which is exactly what a patio is meant to do.