It is freezing cold on the tiles if you do not
When I bought my house the first thing I did was rip out the ugly carpet. The previous owner painted her walls brown, had wood ceilings and then added a brown shag rug to every room. It was a big, brown blob. It was so ugly and horrible looking. I couldn’t stand it! I removed the hideous rug and decided to do gray tile instead. I painted the brown walls white and kept that wood ceiling. Now it is gorgeous. Before laying the tile down, my brother came up with an excellent plan. He told me my HVAC system wasn’t going to last long. I was ripping up my rug anyway. He said I was in the perfect position to add heated flooring. After the cement board and before the tile is where electric heated mats go. You don’t have to go through a HVAC company if you don’t want to. Hardware stores sell the mats and you can install them yourself. For fear of ruining it, I just hired out. It was really nice to have someone do that portion of the flooring. It did double my flooring budget but now I can tell you it is worth it. I love my tile floors and I really like it when they are heated. I thought I would hardly use the heated flooring, but I constantly want them on. It is freezing cold on the tiles if you do not. It is also a quieter system of heating. I like that nobody is woken up in the middle of the night to the heater clicking on.