Tiles are the material people over-order the most, and for good reason. You add ten per cent for cuts and breakages, then a bit more because the batch has to match, and dye lots don't repeat. Run short two days before handover and you're either waiting on stock or explaining to a client why the last row is a slightly different colour.
So almost every tiling job finishes with tiles left. Usually a box or two, sometimes most of a pallet. And then they sit in the garage for three years.
Here's what they're worth and how to shift them without much effort.
Keep some back, but not as many as you think
Hang onto a handful for repairs. If a tile cracks in two years, having the exact batch is worth more than whatever you'd sell them for, and matching it later is close to impossible.
But a handful means five or six, not two boxes. The rest is stock you paid for, sitting in the way.
What leftover tiles actually sell for
The honest range is somewhere around half of retail for unopened boxes in good condition, less for part boxes or anything with obvious wear on the edges. Nothing about that is a fixed rule.. it moves with how desirable the tile is, how much of it you've got, and whether the buyer can get the same thing new down the road.
What pushes the price up:
Quantity that covers a real area. Enough for a laundry floor or a splashback sells far faster than a random dozen. If you have enough for a small room, say so in square metres, because that's how the buyer is thinking.
Original unopened boxes. They tell the buyer nothing is chipped and the batch matches.
Something people are actually looking for. Plain white subway, large-format matte porcelain, timber-look planks and terrazzo-look tiles move quickly because they're in half the renovations happening right now. A heavily patterned feature tile from a decade ago is a harder sell at any price.
Outdoor-rated and non-slip. People renovating patios and pool surrounds struggle to find these second-hand.
What kills it: mixed dye lots, part boxes with no count, and photos that don't show the actual tile face.
List it properly and it takes five minutes
The whole thing that stops people selling leftovers isn't the money, it's the faff. So keep it short.
Write down the size, the finish, and roughly how many square metres you've got. Count the boxes and note whether any are open. Take three photos: the stack so quantity is obvious, one tile face-on in daylight so the colour is honest, and the label on the box with the batch code visible.
That's it. Those three photos answer ninety per cent of what anyone would message you to ask.
Where to sell them
The general classifieds work eventually, but your tiles sit between a couch and someone's old treadmill, and most of the messages are people who never turn up.
Overrun is the alternative I built for this exact problem. It's an Australian marketplace where the only things listed are building materials, so everyone browsing is a tradie, builder or renovator looking for something specific. Listing takes under a minute from your phone. The buyer messages you, comes and collects, and pays you directly. We never take a cut of the sale.
Tiles are one of the better things to list, because they're heavy. Heavy is exactly what makes them expensive to bin and exactly what makes a local buyer keen, since freight on tiles is brutal and collecting from two suburbs away saves them a fortune.
The bit worth doing today
If you've got tiles sitting in the garage right now, go and count the boxes. Not the whole cleanup, just the count. Nine times out of ten there's more there than you remember, and once you know the number the listing takes a minute.
The alternative is what usually happens: they stay there until you move house, and then they go in the skip anyway, at which point you pay tip weight on the heaviest thing in the load.
Quick answers
Are leftover tiles worth selling? Usually yes, especially in unopened boxes and in quantities that cover a real area. As a rule of thumb, clean stock in original packaging tends to fetch around half of retail, though it varies with the tile and the demand.
How many spare tiles should I keep for repairs? Five or six of each type is plenty for future repairs. Keeping two full boxes back is storing stock, not insurance.
Where can I sell leftover tiles in Australia? On Overrun, which lists building materials only, so the people browsing are renovators and tradies actually looking for tiles. The first 3 months are free with code 3FREETRADIE.