About HandyLay

Why this exists

Anyone who has laid tiles knows the problem. The first row looks fine, and three days later the last row turns out to be a strip of two-centimetre slivers running along the most visible wall. The fix is to plan the layout before the first tile is cut - but doing that on paper means redrawing the whole grid every time you move the starting point by a few centimetres.

HandyLay does the redrawing for you. Draw the room, set the tile size and the joint width, then move the starting point around until the edges look right. The layout, the cut pieces and the surface area update while you drag.

What you can do with it

• Draw floors and walls of any shape, and combine or subtract surfaces to model alcoves, columns and doorways.
• Edit walls with live dimensions and keep right angles while you work.
• Apply tile and panel patterns - straight grid, brick and offset bonds, herringbone and more.
• Build your own patterns in the pattern editor and reuse them across projects.
• Upload a photo of the tile you actually intend to buy and lay it across the whole pattern.
• Read the surface area and piece counts as you go, so you know how much material to order.
• Work on a phone, a tablet or a desktop - the planner is touch-aware.
• Use the interface in English, Polish, Spanish or Chinese.

How it works, and where your data goes

Everything runs inside your browser. There is no sign-up, no cloud storage and no server-side copy of your rooms. Projects, custom patterns and uploaded textures are written to your browser's local storage and stay on your device, which also means they are gone if you clear your browser data.

The Privacy Policy sets out exactly which third-party services are involved and what they can see.

Who builds it

HandyLay is built and maintained by one person: a tiler with many years of hands-on experience laying ceramic tiles and floor panels. The planner exists because the problems it solves - a strip of slivers along the wall, a starting row set in the wrong place, one pack of tiles too few - are the ones its author kept running into on site.

The author works under the HandyLay name rather than a personal one, for privacy reasons. Every message sent to the contact address still reaches them directly, and questions about how to plan a particular layout are as welcome as bug reports.

HandyLay is not affiliated with any tile manufacturer, distributor or retailer, and no advertiser has any say over how the planner works.

How it is funded

The planner is free and the intention is to keep it that way. It is paid for by advertising. That is what makes it possible to offer the tool without accounts, subscriptions or a paywall.

Tell us what is missing

The features that get built are the ones people ask for. If the planner cannot handle the room you are working on, write to contact [at] handylay [dot] app and describe it - real examples are far more useful than general suggestions.