Why the prints imitate beige stones
Porcelain is the largest material group here, and the effect list says what those tiles are copying: limestone look first, then travertine look, then marble look.
That order is the giveaway. A printed tile chases the stones that sell, and in beige the stones that sell are the sedimentary ones. On a gray page the prints imitate slate and concrete; here they imitate the two softest stones in the catalog, because those are the ones beige actually comes from.
The names beige arrives under
The color field holds more than the word beige: Sand, Dune, Desert, African Beige, Ivory, Latte, Crema, Chiaro, Shell. Series names add Tuscany, Jerusalem, Royal and Country to that.
Those names are doing work the color cannot. Beige runs from a cool putty through to a warm cream, and two products both filed as beige can land a long way apart on that line, so the name is what narrows a search and a sample is what settles it.
The outdoor half of a beige range
Pavers and pool coping together are a substantial part of this page, which is not true of most color pages. Pool decks and terraces lean beige, and the pool and spa paving page covers the options around water.
The thickness list follows, with a 1 1/4 inch group for the stone pavers and a 20 mm group for the porcelain. Travertine pavers and pool and spa paving cover the outdoor side.
Tumbled is the second finish
Matte is the largest finish group, tumbled the second, and polished, glossy and honed divide what is left. A tumbled face is unusual this high in a finish list and it is here because of travertine: tumbling is how a soft stone gets a surface that suits a terrace.
It rounds the edges as well as the face, so a tumbled beige paver reads as older than it is and the joints between pieces read as wider. The travertine tile page sets out the finishes across that stone.
The soft stones and what that means
Travertine and limestone make up most of the stone here, and both are softer than a marble and considerably softer than a granite. That is a property and not a fault: it is why they can be tumbled, brushed and split at all, and why the surfaces available in beige are more varied than in any harder stone.
It also means the finish on a beige stone is doing more of the work than the color is. The same limestone honed, tumbled and split face is three different products, and the limestone tile page works through what separates them.
Formats from a sheet to a panel
12x24 and 12x12 lead the size list, then 24x48, 24x24, 16x24 and 6x12, with a mosaic group underneath. Hexagon, penny round and herringbone all appear in the shapes, though in smaller numbers than on the white page.
The large formats here are mostly porcelain and the small ones mostly stone, which follows from how each is made: a fired tile can be thin and large at once and a quarried one cannot.
Shade variation in a sedimentary stone
A limestone or a travertine formed in layers over a long time, so the block a tile came out of varies through its depth as well as across its face. That is why a beige stone order shows more piece to piece difference than a beige porcelain does.
The variation is not a defect and it is not a grading failure; it is what the stone is. What it does mean is that a beige stone floor is a surface to be judged as a whole, where a porcelain floor can be judged tile by tile, and that the pieces for one room are worth buying in one go.
Beige against gray
These two colors have traded places twice in twenty years and beige is currently the one coming back. What actually separates them for a buyer is not fashion but what else is in the room.
A beige floor goes with wood, brass, terracotta and warm whites without an argument. A gray floor goes with steel, cool whites and black. Neither is neutral in the way people mean when they say neutral, and the gray tile and mosaic page works through the same question from the other side.
