Lippage is the thing that turns an otherwise decent tile job into a bad one. You walk in, the tiles are dead level by your eye, and then you spot one corner sitting 1mm proud of its neighbour catching the light. That is lippage, and on big tiles it is almost guaranteed without a levelling system.
Manual Levelling Tile (MLT) systems fix it. They sound complicated; they are not. A clip slots under both tiles, a wedge clamps them flat against each other while the adhesive sets, and the height stays even. This guide is what I wish I had been handed when 600mm porcelain became the UK standard — when to use clips, which system to buy, and the mistakes that waste your money.
Key takeaways
- Clips are essential on tiles 600mm or larger; pointless on 300mm wall tiles.
- Clips are single-use; wedges are reusable for years.
- Match the clip stem to your tile thickness, not the joint width.
- Budget about £8–£12 per square metre for clips on a typical large-format job.
What an MLT System Actually Is
A Manual Levelling Tile system has three parts.
The clip is a thin plastic foot with a vertical stem and a notch. The foot slides under two adjacent tiles. The stem sits in the joint. The notch is the breakpoint that lets you snap the stem off after the adhesive cures, leaving the foot trapped in the adhesive bed forever.
The wedge is a small plastic ramp that slides through the slot in the stem. As you push it in, it pulls the two tiles down against the foot, forcing them flush. One wedge per clip.
The pliers are the tool that drives the wedge home. You can push wedges by hand on small jobs but on a kitchen floor your thumbs will be raw by tile twenty. Spend the £15 on the pliers.
You buy clips by the bag (usually 100 or 400) and wedges separately or in a kit. The clips are the consumable; everything else is a tool.
When You Need Levelling Clips
Tiles get bigger every year. The UK trade default ten years ago was 300×300mm or 400×400mm. Today it is 600×600mm minimum, with 600×1200mm and 800×800mm common in kitchens and hallways.
Use clips when:
- Any tile 600mm or larger on the longest edge.
- Rectified large-format porcelain over 450mm — these have almost zero edge bevel so any lippage shows.
- Plank tiles (600×150mm, 1200×200mm) laid in a brick pattern. Plank tiles bow in the centre and a 33% offset puts the bowed centre next to the flat end of the next tile. Without clips you get washboard lippage every joint.
- Wall tiles 600mm or larger — gravity will pull the lower tile down on a long wall as the adhesive grabs.
- Anywhere the customer is paying enough that lippage will lose you the recommendation.
Skip clips when:
- Standard 300×300mm or 400×400mm bathroom wall tiles — overkill, and the small joint width often cannot fit the clip stem.
- Mosaic sheets — clips do not work on small individual tiles.
- Penny-round, hexagons, or any pattern with non-square tiles unless you buy a specialist clip.
- Reclaimed or handmade tiles where the look depends on slight variation.
The honest test: stand a metre away from the largest tile you are about to lay. Does the centre look bowed compared to the edges? Lay it loose against another tile and run your finger across the joint. If you can feel a step, you need clips.
The Top Levelling Systems on the UK Market
I have used most of the systems sold in the UK. These are the four worth your time.
Tool Depot 400-piece MLT System (~£10.47)
The cheapest credible option on Amazon UK. You get 100 clips, 100 wedges, and a pair of plastic pliers in one box. Joint size 2mm, suitable for tiles 3–12mm thick. The plastic on the pliers is not going to last a career but the clips and wedges are dimensionally correct and grip properly. For a single bathroom or kitchen, this is genuinely all you need.
I tested this system on a 600×600mm porcelain hallway last autumn and the clips broke at the breakpoint cleanly without taking lumps of adhesive with them, which is what cheaper clones often do. At ten quid, it pays for itself on the first job.
Tool Depot 400pc MLT System on Amazon → · Buy via TileFlow shop
OGORI 400-piece System (~£21.99)
Step up in plier quality. Metal-jaw pliers instead of plastic, slightly thicker clip stems, same 2mm joint. Worth the extra ten pounds if you are doing more than one or two large-format jobs a year. The wedges are the same generic moulding most non-Raimondi kits share.
OGORI 400pc System on Amazon →
Raimondi RLS
The original. Raimondi invented the wedge-and-clip MLT system in Italy in the early 2000s and most cheap kits are clones of their patent (now expired). Raimondi clips have a more consistent breakpoint than any of the budget brands and the wedges have a tighter ramp angle so the clamping force is higher. You buy clips separately from wedges and pliers, which means you stock the boxes you actually use.
Pricier — about £35 for a starter kit, £25 per 250 clips after — but if you do this work for a living the clip consistency is worth it.
Rubi DELTA
Rubi's UK-friendly answer. Sold through tile merchants more than Amazon. The DELTA system uses a slightly different clip geometry that snaps off below the tile face so you do not get any plastic stub above the bed. Build quality is excellent, plier ergonomics are the best on the market, and the clips come in 1mm, 2mm and 3mm joint widths.
If you are already in the Rubi tool family — see the Sigma vs RUBI tile cutter comparison for the cutter side — DELTA fits the same trade-spec bracket.
Step-by-Step: How to Use a Levelling System
The technique is simple but the order matters.
- Spread adhesive with the right notched trowel for your tile size — usually 12mm square notch for 600mm or larger. Back-butter the tile too. Aim for 100% coverage; clips do not fix gaps in the bed.
- Lay the first tile. Bed it down with a rubber mallet, check for level, adjust.
- Slide a clip foot under the edge where the next tile will sit. One clip every 25–30cm along the joint, two minimum on a 600mm edge.
- Lay the second tile so its edge sits on the same clip feet. The clip stems should now be sticking up between the two tiles.
- Push the wedge through each clip stem, hand-tight first.
- Drive the wedge home with the pliers. Two clicks of the ratchet is enough — you are pulling the tiles flush, not crushing them.
- Check by feel. Run your finger across the joint. Should be glass-flat. If one tile is still proud, drive that wedge harder.
- Wait for cure. 24 hours for standard C2 adhesive, 3–4 hours for rapid-set. See the tile adhesive buying guide for cure times by adhesive class.
- Snap off the clips with a side kick from a soft-toed boot, parallel to the joint. Do not kick down the joint or you will chip the tile edge.
- Pull the wedges out for the next job.
That is it. The thinking part is in steps 1 and 3 — get the adhesive bed and the clip spacing right and the rest is mechanical.
Common Mistakes That Waste Clips
Wrong clip thickness for the tile. Clip stems are sized for tile thickness ranges. A clip rated for 3–12mm tiles will not grip a 20mm exterior porcelain slab — the foot is too thin to make contact. Read the bag.
Using clips to fix bad subfloor prep. A clip pulls two adjacent tile edges flush. It cannot lift a tile out of a dip in the screed. If your substrate is more than 3mm out over a 2m level, self-level it first. See the subfloor prep guide.
Removing the wedges too early. The adhesive needs to be fully cured. If the wedge comes out at 6 hours on a standard C2 adhesive, the tiles can still creep — and you have lost the clamping force.
Wedges driven too hard. You are clamping, not pressing. Two clicks of a ratchet plier is plenty. Three clicks and you start cracking the corners on porcelain edges, especially rectified.
Not enough clips per joint. One clip in the middle of a 600mm joint is not enough. Two minimum, three on 1200mm planks. They are 5p each — use them.
Snapping clips by stamping. Always kick parallel to the joint. Stamping straight down can lever the clip foot upwards and break the bond between tile and adhesive.
Cost Per Square Metre
This is the conversation I have on every quote.
For 600×600mm tiles laid with a 3mm joint and two clips per linear metre of joint, you use roughly 8–10 clips per square metre. Wedges are reused, so they do not enter the per-job cost after the first kit.
| System | Clip cost per 100 | Cost per m² (600×600) | Cost per m² (1200×600 plank) | |---|---|---|---| | Tool Depot budget | ~£3 | £0.30 | £0.45 | | OGORI mid-range | ~£5 | £0.50 | £0.75 | | Raimondi RLS | ~£10 | £1.00 | £1.50 | | Rubi DELTA | ~£12 | £1.20 | £1.80 |
You charge clips through to the customer, no different from grout or adhesive. On a £3,000 floor a tenner of clips is rounding error.
Reusability: What You Keep, What You Bin
Single-use: the clips. The foot stays in the bed forever. Even if you snap cleanly above the breakpoint, the buried foot is gone.
Reusable indefinitely: the wedges. A good Raimondi wedge will do hundreds of jobs. Rinse them off, dry them, throw them back in the bag.
Reusable but a consumable: the pliers. Cheap plastic plier jaws snap after 50–100 jobs. Metal-jaw pliers (Rubi, Raimondi, OGORI) last for years.
If you are picking up a budget kit and you intend to keep doing this work, buy the kit for the wedges, throw the plastic pliers in a drawer, and order a decent metal pair separately.
Alternatives to Plastic-Clip Systems
A few things people ask about.
Spinning-disc systems (Spin Doctor, Tuscan Strap). These use a threaded post and a spinning cap instead of a wedge. Faster to apply, slower to remove. Same per-clip price. Worth a try if you do high volume — I prefer wedge systems for the tactile feedback when the tiles pull flush.
Suction-cup levellers. Marketed as reusable. They are, but they need both tiles to be glass-flat already, which defeats the point. Avoid.
Just using more spacers. Spacers set joint width, not height. They do not fix lippage. See the tile spacers buying guide for what spacers actually do.
Tapping each tile down with a rubber mallet and an eye-level. This is what we did before MLT systems existed. It works on tiles up to about 450mm and small-format mosaic. On 600mm-plus rectified porcelain, you cannot bed every tile flush by feel. The clips do the precise final mm of adjustment.
What I Buy and Why
For most jobs I run a mix.
Day-to-day domestic floors (600×600mm porcelain, 3mm joints): budget kit clips. The Tool Depot 400-piece bag does two average kitchens. At a tenner a bag I am not chasing pennies on consistency — modern budget clips snap fine.
Plank tiles, 1200×200mm: Raimondi RLS clips. Plank lippage is ruthless and the consistent Raimondi breakpoint matters when you have 200 clips on a kitchen floor.
Anything 800mm-plus, or 20mm exterior slab: Rubi DELTA. The thicker stem versions are the only ones I trust on heavy slabs, and the plier ergonomics matter when you are wedging 300 clips a day on a patio.
Tool Depot 400pc MLT System on Amazon → · Blue metal-jaw pliers → · Browse the TileFlow shop
Bottom Line
Levelling clips are the single biggest quality upgrade you can make on large-format tiling. They are not a substitute for proper subfloor prep — see the subfloor prep guide — and they are not magic on bad adhesive coverage. But on a flat substrate with a good C2 S1 adhesive, clips turn an average finish into the kind of flush, light-catching tile floor that actually wins you the next job.
For a one-off bathroom or kitchen, the budget kits are fine. For trade use, spend the extra on Raimondi or Rubi. The wedges and pliers will pay for themselves over the first ten jobs.
For more on the basics that sit underneath all this — adhesive class, joint width, cutter choice — see the best budget tiling tools roundup and the how to choose a tile cutter guide.
Sources:
- BS EN 14411:2016 (Ceramic tiles — Definitions, classification, characteristics, evaluation of conformity, marking)
- Raimondi RLS technical product sheets (raimondiutensili.it, 2024)
- Rubi DELTA System datasheet (rubi.com UK, 2024)
Affiliate disclosure: TileFlow UK is an Amazon Associate (tag: tileflowuk-21). The Amazon links in this post pay a small commission if you buy — at no extra cost to you. Full affiliate disclosure here.