Tile Lippage Correction — Fix It In Place While You Still Can
ZEBRA TOOLS is a tile leveling manufacturer in Wenzhou, China. The tile is down, the floor is dry, and two edges sit a couple of millimetres proud. Can you still fix it, or is it a rip-out? Tile lippage correction has one rule that decides the answer: is the adhesive still workable? This page walks that decision — shim it in place, push it down, or lift and re-lay.
ISO 9001 
TÜV Rheinland 
CE Marked 
RoHS Horseshoe shims (1.5–6.5mm) lift a low tile edge only while the adhesive can still move — once it cures, the tile comes up and goes back down with clips. The shim range covers nearly all field lippage, which is why most lippage complaints are settled under the straightedge, not with a chisel.
Lippage Is a Repair — So the First Decision Is Time
Not which tool. Whether you still have a workable joint.
Lippage is the defect that shows in a photograph: raking light turns a 1mm step into a hard shadow, and it is the fastest way a job turns into a callback. The correction is cheap when the mortar is still soft — a shim under the low edge, a mallet on the high one. The correction is expensive when it is not: the tile comes up, the floor is cleaned, and the tile goes back down. Everything on this page is about making that first decision correctly and acting inside the window.
Selection Decision — Condition to Action
Read the joint, then pick the move. Shim ranges are rendered from product data.
| Condition you find | Tool to use | Why it’s the move |
|---|---|---|
| Low edge, adhesive still workable | Horseshoe Shims1.5 / 3.0 / 5.0 / 6.5mm | Drive the shim under the low edge and it lifts the tile flush while the mortar can still move — the cheapest fix in tiling. |
| High edge, adhesive still workable | Tile Mallet HammerBM-C01 / BM-C02 | A high tile is pushed down, not shimmed up — a rubber mallet over a wooden block seats it flush before the mortar cures. |
| Field lippage within 6.5mm | Horseshoe Shims1.5 / 3.0 / 5.0 / 6.5mm | The shim range 1.5–6.5mm covers the lippage you find in practice; each size is a 100-piece bag for whole-job coverage. |
| Mortar already cured — or lippage beyond the shim range | Tile Leveling Clips3–24mm + Tile Leveling Wedges1–14mm | Once the adhesive has set, the honest fix is to lift and re-lay the offending tile — and clips + wedges are how it stays flat the second time. |
What Shims Fix — and What Needs a Re-Lay
The boundary is the working time of the adhesive and the height of the step.
✓ What it fixes
- Low tile edges lifted flush while the mortar is workable
- High edges tapped down before the adhesive cures
- Lippage up to 6.5mm — the full practical field range
- Raking-light callbacks caught the same afternoon
✕ What it can’t fix
- Mortar already cured — no shim can move a set tile
- Steps above the 6.5mm shim range
- An unlevel substrate causing lippage in every row
- The reason it happened — which is always prevention
How to Correct — 5 Steps
The repair workflow, gated by the working-time check.
Decide: is the mortar still workable?
This is the whole gate. If the adhesive can still move, you correct in place; if it has cured, you lift the tile and re-lay it.
Lift a low edge with a shim
Slide the horseshoe shim under the low edge and drive it in until the tile reads flush on the straightedge.
Push down a high edge
For a high tile, tap it flush with a rubber mallet over a wooden block while the mortar is still soft.
Check every joint with a straightedge
Rake the light across the floor and sweep the straightedge over each joint — fix anything still proud before you walk away.
Trim the shim tail after set
Once the mortar cures, snap or trim the exposed shim tail flush with the tile surface and grout over it.
Operator’s Checklist
Go deeper with our how to prevent tile lippage guide and the lippage cost for distributors breakdown.
Tile Lippage Correction FAQ
The four questions that decide whether a floor is repaired or re-done.