These Dunelm adhesive floor tiles have completely transformed my bathroom for less than £90 - here's what I learned from my weekend DIY project

Over the last 2 years of living in my rental home, I have become somewhat accustomed to all of the things I swore I could fix when I first moved in. When I first set sights on my very beige bathroom, I was committed to making some renter-friendly upgrades, but as everyday life inevitably gets in the way, I never did.

So when I spotted these renter-friendly, peel-and-stick floor tiles from Dunelm, it gave me the push I needed to finally do something about my sad bathroom. As we get into the winter months, I want my bathroom to feel like a cosy space to unwind in - not one where all I can focus on is the dirty grout.

I've been curious about adhesive tiles for a while now, but I have always been concerned that they would look cheap. In my opinion, this isn't the case with these Dunelm tiles at all. Here's how I used them to achieve a budget bathroom makeover in just a few hours.

When it comes to interiors, it's safe to say that I am someone who enjoys compiling inspiration across many Pinterest boards, but I am less enthusiastic about executing these grand ideas. In other words, I put this DIY project off for a while, and I completely regret not trying it sooner.

Having never laid any tiles before, adhesive or not, I decided to tackle the task with a gung-ho attitude - and I now have some lessons learned that will help anyone else trying to do the same.

The first hurdle was figuring out how many tiles I needed for the project. The Dunelm tiles come in a pack of 10, each measuring 30cm x 30cm, so I put these details plus my bathroom floorplan into AI to help me calculate how many packets to purchase.

I definitely came out with more tiles than I needed, but it has been useful to have extra for small, awkward gaps. Overall, I used 6 boxes which comes to £86.40 - not bad for a tweak that makes a big impact.

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The only tools you need for this are a utility knife and a large ruler (the bigger the better). I started by measuring across the back wall of my bathroom to find the mid point, then I stuck the first tile down in the centre of the room, with the aim of working outwards.

This was an adequate strategy, but the advice on the tile box recommends working in quadrants, which I would recommend as this minimises how many cuts you need to do.

After finding some photos as inspiration, I decided to lay the tiles in a diamond checkerboard pattern, working in an alternate black and white pattern. The middle tiles went down really easily and I was soon well on my way to filling the centre of the room.

I quickly came up against some tricky edges, which is where my utility knife came into play. The adhesive tiles were easy to cut down - I used the ruler to measure and then scored with the utility knife. You could then easily snap the excess off.

However, this is where I made some mistakes with measurements. At the side of the room, some cuts were made too big so you could see the original tiles peeking through.

After a few mishaps, I started using the paper backing from the tiles to create stencils, which I then used to score around on the tile. This was a much easier method which I took across the rest of the project.

With a few breaks in between, this took me around 4 hours to complete, which isn't bad for a weekend DIY task.

I am super chuffed with how they look. It's brightened up the whole space and feels like a much cleaner and stylish space.

The marble effect on the tiles looks much more realistic than I had anticipated and they feel very tile-like underfoot, which was important to me. The dirty grout lines are officially covered up, and I now actually look forward to doing my skincare.

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