Why everything here is 3/8 inch
Every piece in this range is 3/8 inch thick, and that uniformity is the reason the collection exists as a collection rather than as a suggestion.
Two stones alternating across a floor have to finish level at every one of the thousands of edges where they meet. A sixteenth of an inch between them is something a foot finds immediately. Gathering the pieces that share a thickness is most of the work of making a checkerboard possible.
Size sets the character
The common size is 12x12, with 18x18 and 24x24 behind it, and the three produce completely different floors from the same two stones.
A 12x12 checker is the traditional scale: a hall holds a lot of squares, the pattern reads as a floor covering and it belongs to the period it came from. At 24x24 the same pattern reads as a modern graphic, since a room might only hold twenty or thirty squares and each one is an event. 18x18 sits between the two and reads as neither.
Square or on the diagonal
The same pair of stones laid square to the walls and laid at forty five degrees produce two different rooms, and the decision is free at the point of ordering.
Square, the pattern lines up with the architecture and reads as calm and formal. Turned to the diagonal, the squares become diamonds running into the corners, which widens a narrow hall and gives the floor a movement the square version does not have. The diagonal costs more in cuts at every wall.
The pairs are not only black and white
The stones here include the Nero blacks, Thassos and the Calacatta and Carrara whites, the gray Bardiglio, a Bella and a green.
That opens pairings the classic version does not have. A Bardiglio gray against Thassos white is a softer checker with the same structure; a green against a white is a period combination that predates the black and white floor. Black and white tile sets out the classic pairing in full.
Polished and honed, and mixing them
This range splits roughly evenly between polished and honed, which raises a third variable most people do not consider.
Two stones in the same finish read as one floor in two colors. The same two stones with one polished and one honed read as two materials, because the light comes back differently from each, and the contrast stops being only about color. It is worth settling on purpose, since it changes the floor as much as the pair of colors does.
The quantities do not split evenly
A checkerboard looks like it needs equal amounts of each stone and it rarely does. The perimeter is where the assumption breaks.
Cut pieces at the walls fall unevenly between the two colors depending on where the pattern starts, and a diagonal layout makes the imbalance larger. Setting the starting point before the quantities are settled is the practical step, because the two orders are separate stones and matching one of them later is a different problem from matching a single tile.
Where a checkerboard belongs
An entry, a hall, a kitchen, a bathroom, a conservatory and the floor of a small formal room. It has been the floor of choice for entrance halls for several centuries, which is a longer run than most patterns manage.
Marble tile holds the stone in all of its colors, and black and white mosaic is the same idea at sheet scale, where the alignment is settled in the factory.
