Drilling porcelain stoneware tiles

Need to make circular holes or openings in our porcelain stoneware slabs to make room for sanitary fixture pipes, the toilet cistern, recessed spotlights, electrical ducting or wall sockets, and you don't know how?

Follow our instructions and watch our video tutorials

The glassiness of porcelain stoneware tiles and their high degree of hardness often make it difficult to use traditional tools to make holes and openings, which, in the case of toilet cisterns, for example, measure 15x25 cm. If one of the two sides of the opening is only a few centimetres away from the edge of the tile and the integrity of the frame needs to be maintained, the risk of breakage increases.

To drill holes and openings in porcelain stoneware slabs safely and professionally, follow a few simple but important steps.

Drilling holes

The quickest solution for drilling holes in porcelain stoneware tiles is to use professional diamond cutters that can be mounted on the most popular angle grinders with interchangeable discs, such as Montolit's Mondrillo cutters (available in diameter sizes ranging from 6 mm to 75 mm), which can make a hole in a few minutes, leaving the surface of the tile intact and without chippings around the opening.

It’s important to make the hole by using the cutter with a rotary movement without applying too much pressure on the attachment point. Make sure to dampen the drilling point with water and drill the hole several times, always damping it.

Click here to watch our video tutorial

Making openings

In the event of rectangular or square openings, making incisions and cuts with just the disc mounted on an angle grinder (often not suitable for porcelain stoneware) is very difficult and gives uncertain results. The stress caused by the cutting and the vibrations on the material, in the precarious working conditions often found in construction sites, can cause cracks and breakage, even after gluing the piece.

We recommend that you proceed as follows:

Phase one: follow the procedure described for making holes using professional diamond cutters to make 4 holes with a diameter of about 10-15 mm in correspondence with the vertices delimiting the opening.

An opening a few centimetres from the edges of the tile

Step two: If necessary, drill additional holes along the cutting edges delimiting the opening. The number of these holes depends on the size of the sides of the opening.

1st hole to be made

Cutting perimeter of the opening to be made

Step three: gently and progressively score the tile from hole to hole using a professional angle grinder with a diamond disc suitable for porcelain stoneware slabs.

Additional holes along the opening’s cutting perimeter

The quality and structure of the diamond disc is crucial during this delicate stage, as it operates at very high speed and must maintain its rigidity and cutting properties intact.

In particular, we recommend Montolit (art. CTX 115, art. CG 115, art. TCS 115, the latter also available with an 85 mm diameter), SANKYO, MAXIMA CER-Rosa Turbo, and CLIPPER Super Gres XT EVO professional diamond discs.

We also recommend the BOSCH GTR 30 CE tool, which is equipped with cutters of a suitable diameter for this application, for drilling holes at the vertices of the openings. Various uses of this tool, even under the worst conditions, have demonstrated its effectiveness in drilling and cutting porcelain stoneware tiles.

We recommend that you always carry out the operations described above on a flat, stable surface, possibly by placing the porcelain stoneware slab on a sheet of polystyrene or soft rubber to reduce vibrations and ensure more safety.