Pool tiling in Los Angeles

Fujiwa and NPT cover most of what goes into pools here, and both hold ranges that stay available long enough to match a repair years later — which matters more than it sounds, because a discontinued waterline band means retiling the whole line instead of ten feet of it. Beyond those two: glass mosaic, porcelain, and travertine where the tile has to sit against travertine coping without an argument between them.

Usually, and it should be tried first. A light film comes off with a tile cleaner and a pumice block by hand. A hard grey band that has built for years needs bead blasting, which strips the deposit without taking the glaze with it. Retiling is the answer when the tile is loose, the grout has gone, or the calcium has etched the surface — and that is a decision made with a fingernail on the tile, not from a photograph. How the cleaning itself is done is on the tile cleaning page.

A new concrete shell can be rendered, prepared and fully tiled once the concrete has had its curing time. Painted, plastered, pebble and previously tiled concrete pools can all be converted, once the old surface is off and the shell underneath has been sounded out and repaired. Fiberglass and vinyl-lined pools cannot: a flexible shell moves and tile does not.

Tile is sold by the square foot. Entry-level ceramic mosaic starts around $60 per square foot and glass mosaic around $97, with premium colours and formats well past that. Those are supply figures only — preparation and installation are separate, and on a renovation they are usually the larger half.

Pool size and the contractor's minimum charge, removing the old surface and hauling it away, crack, rust and leak repairs, rendering and levelling, waterproofing, the tile itself, curves and custom cuts, steps, benches, ledges, spas and spillways, detailing around every fitting, and access. Spas are priced separately because corners and seats take far more time per square foot than an open floor.

A finished tiled pool looks simple because the preparation is hidden. The price covers demolition, fault finding, concrete and render preparation, detailed set-out, thousands of cuts, immersion-rated materials, work around fittings, controlled curing, and responsibility for a finish expected to stay underwater for decades. You are not only paying for the tiles you can see.

A properly prepared and tiled concrete pool gives a smooth, easy-to-clean and highly durable interior. Tile resists staining and pool chemicals well, can often be repaired in sections, and needs no repainting or resurfacing. The upfront cost is higher, so it is generally chosen by owners who want long service life and low surface maintenance.

It focuses on fully tiled pools, experienced crews, elevated detail and a more considered process from the first visit to handover. It is for projects where preparation and detail take precedence over the lowest number.

For people who want the top of the range and understand that the result depends on the installer and the preparation, not on the tile in the box.

Pool Care LA is a trade name of R R Pools, California contractor licence #970493, classifications B (General Building) and C-53 (Swimming Pool). It is public on cslb.ca.gov and takes two minutes to check.

Tile outlasts every other pool interior by a wide margin. It is gentler on skin than most rendered finishes, and it is also the most expensive thing you can put in a pool. A fully tiled pool is the easiest interior to look after, because there is nothing porous for algae to hold onto.

Yes and no. The up-front cost is the highest of any interior. The running cost is the lowest, and it is the only interior that is not on a replacement cycle — which is the entire argument. Every other interior needs more chemical to hold the same reading, and eventually replacement; plaster in Los Angeles water reaches the short end of its published life, not the long end.

Yes, if you would rather not source it yourself. We can also point owner-builders at formwork, steel fixing, shotcrete and pool plumbing crews we have worked with.

The waterline band, yes: the water is dropped below the tile line, the old band comes off, the substrate is made good and the new band goes on, then the pool is topped back up. A fully tiled interior is a different job and the pool has to be empty — the shell has to be sounded for hollow render, repaired and prepared before a permanent finish goes over it.

No, and a showroom is the worst place to make the final call. The sample there is dry, lit by fluorescent tubes and held against a white wall, and glass and glazed ceramic change colour completely once they are wet and sitting next to your plaster and coping. Use a showroom to build a shortlist if you like the range, then decide at the pool: we bring the shortlisted samples out, wet them, and hold them in the light that yard actually gets at the hour you use it.

The volume is not what the quote is built from. A 15,000-gallon backyard pool is roughly 14 by 28 feet, but plaster and tile are priced by interior surface area, so two pools holding the same water can be quoted a third apart once steps, benches, a spa and a deep end are measured. Our interior work starts at $7,500 and most projects land between $10,000 and $20,000 — the figures and what moves them are on the resurfacing page. Tile is quoted separately, because a waterline band is a fraction of a full interior.