The room is measured. I know the size of the tiles and the width of the joints. Yet I walk from one doorway to another, stand in different corners and draw the layout several times before deciding where the first tile should go.

People sometimes ask what I am looking for.

It is a difficult question to answer because I am not looking at any particular tile. In fact, there are no tiles on the floor at all.

I am trying to imagine the finished room.

Sometimes the layout shifts by a few millimetres to improve a cut beside a doorway. Occasionally the entire floor rotates by a fraction of a degree.

Only when the floor begins to make sense do I begin laying it.

As the work progresses, I stop every few rows and look over what I have done. Not because I have forgotten the measurements, but because measurements alone are never enough. A tape measure tells me where each tile is. My eyes tell me whether they still belong together.

A tiled floor is laid one tile at a time.

It is never seen that way.

When you walk into a room, you do not notice dozens of individual tiles. You experience the floor as a single thing. A wandering joint, an awkward cut or a line that suddenly changes its rhythm attracts attention because it interrupts the whole your eye had already accepted.

Perhaps this is why good tilework can be difficult to explain.

People often say that it feels calm, balanced or simply right. They rarely mention the grout joints or the cuts around the edges. Those details matter enormously to the tiler because they determine whether the individual tiles remain individual tiles or become a floor.

The better the floor, the less you notice the individual tiles. They stop competing for attention and begin working together.

Eventually they disappear into the floor.

And that is all you ever meant to see.