How do I fit a bathroom cabinet or mirror to a tiled wall?
Working out what is behind the tile, choosing a fixing that carries a loaded cabinet, and drilling tile at the right height without cracking it.
- Difficulty
- intermediate
- Time
- 1 hr 15 min
- Read
- 4 min
- Safety
- warning
Short answer
Find out what the wall behind the tile is before you buy the fixings — the cabinet's weight when loaded is what matters, not its empty weight. Drill through the tile with the hammer off and a tile bit, switch to a masonry bit for the wall behind, and never put a fixing in a grout line. Bed each fixing in silicone so water cannot track down the screw.
Do this first
Bathroom cabinets are hung by people who weigh the empty box, put in two plasterboard plugs and load it with shampoo bottles. The wall behind the tile is what carries it, and in a modern house that is very often plasterboard on dabs, which needs a completely different fixing from the one that comes in the box. Getting that right is most of the job.
Safety
A loaded bathroom cabinet falling off a wall lands on a basin or on a person. Never rely on plasterboard fixings alone for a cabinet that will hold bottles and glass, and never drill a bathroom wall without checking for pipes and cables — a mirror cabinet goes exactly where a shaver socket cable and the basin supplies run. If the cabinet has a light or a socket in it, the electrical connection is a bathroom-zone job and needs an electrician.
What you'll need
- A pipe and cable detector
- A tile or diamond drill bit, and a masonry bit
- A drill with switchable hammer action
- Fixings appropriate to the wall behind the tile
- A spirit level and masking tape
- Sanitary silicone
- A helper to hold the cabinet
Step by step
- Work out the loaded weight, not the empty weight.A mirror cabinet full of bottles, glass shelves and a mirror door is several times its shipping weight, and the load is cantilevered out from the wall. Specify the fixings for that.
- Find out what is behind the tile.Tap it. A solid ring is masonry; a hollow drum is plasterboard. Then drill a small exploratory hole in an inconspicuous spot and watch the dust and the feel: red or grey dust with steady resistance is brick or block; white powder and the bit dropping into a void after 12 to 15mm is plasterboard. Push a wire in to tell dot-and-dab from a stud wall.
- Detect for pipes and cables before marking anything.Above a basin is where the basin supplies rise, where a shaver socket cable drops, and often where a light cable runs. Scan the whole area in both directions and mark everything before you decide the position.
- Set the height by the mirror, not by the tile courses.A mirror cabinet's height is set by eye level for the people using it — centre at about the usual user's eye level and the top edge above the tallest user's eye line. Then check where the fixings land and adjust slightly so they fall in the body of tiles, not on grout lines.
- Choose the fixing for the wall you actually have.Solid masonry: a good-quality expansion plug of decent diameter, or a resin anchor in soft old brick. Dot-and-dab: a long fixing that passes through board and void and anchors in the masonry behind, with a spacer so tightening does not crush the board. Stud wall: into a stud with a substantial screw, or into a noggin. Heavy-duty toggles are acceptable for a light cabinet on board and are not adequate for a loaded one.
- Mark through the cabinet, level.Hold the cabinet up with a helper, level it, and mark through its fixing holes or its hanging bracket. Then check the marks against your detector marks again before drilling. Many cabinets hang on a rail or on keyhole brackets, which give some lateral adjustment — use it.
- Drill the tile with the hammer off.Tape over the mark. Tile or diamond bit, slow speed, light pressure, perfectly square to the wall, no hammer. A little water on a hard porcelain tile keeps the bit cool. Stop as soon as you are through the tile — you will feel it break through.
- Switch to masonry mode past the tile.Change to a masonry bit of the right diameter for your plug and drill the wall behind, using hammer action only if the substrate is genuinely masonry. Drill deep enough that the plug sits entirely in the wall material, not partly in the tile and adhesive.
- Bed the fixings in silicone.A smear of sanitary silicone in each hole and on the back of the bracket before fixing stops water tracking down the screw into the wall. In a bathroom this is worth the thirty seconds.
- Hang, level and check.Hang the cabinet, check it with a level, and adjust on the bracket if it allows. Then push down and out on the front bottom edge — that is the loading a cabinet actually gets when someone pulls a door open, and it is what finds an inadequate fixing before the shampoo does.
- Deal with any electrics properly.If the cabinet has an integral light, a shaver socket or a demister pad, its connection is electrical work in a bathroom zone. The zones dictate what fitting is permitted where and the work is notifiable. Get an electrician; do not improvise a connection to a lighting circuit.
Common mistakes
- Using the plugs supplied in the box — They are generic and are usually sized for solid masonry. They tell you nothing about your wall.
- Putting a fixing in a grout line — Grout is weaker than tile, the plug has nothing consistent to bear on, and splitting the grout lets water into the adhesive bed.
- Drilling tile with hammer action on — It cracks the tile, often not at the hole but across the whole tile, and a cracked tile in a bathroom means a replacement.
- Hanging a loaded cabinet on plasterboard toggles — Toggles are rated for a static load. A cabinet full of bottles with someone pulling the door is a cantilevered dynamic load and it comes off the wall.