What varies between two pieces
Three things move. The registration between colors shifts slightly, because a thin brass divider is placed by hand in every mold. The tone of each pigment varies between batches. And the face is never perfectly flat, since the tile cured rather than being fired.
None of those is a fault and all of them are visible if you look for them. A floor of these reads handmade at two feet and reads as a single surface from the doorway, which is the whole point of the material. Cement tile sets out how they are made.
Five eighths of an inch, not a half
These run at 5/8 inch, which is thicker than most of the cement range and much thicker than a pressed wall tile.
Hand-poured tile is thick because it has to survive being handled wet, cured on a rack and moved several times before it is boxed. It is also the figure that decides the threshold, since a 5/8 inch floor meets a 3/8 inch one at a step of a quarter of an inch.
8x8, which is the pattern module
All three are 8x8, the traditional cement tile size, and the patterns were drawn to it.
A geometric figure on a cement tile completes across four or more pieces, so the size of the field and where it gets cut decide whether the figure reads whole. That is settled on paper before the order rather than at the wall. Patterned backsplash tile covers the layout question.
Honed, which is how they are finished
All three pieces are honed: the cured surface ground flat and even, with nothing applied over it.
There is no glaze on a cement tile and nothing to wear through. The pigmented face is a solid mineral layer several millimeters deep, so what a floor of these loses over decades is the sharpness of the surface rather than the pattern in it.
Ordering a handmade tile
The allowance on a hand-poured tile is not the same as on a pressed one, and the difference is selection rather than breakage.
Some pieces will sit better next to each other than others, and a person laying them sorts as they go. That sorting consumes tiles, which is why a handmade order carries a larger allowance than the cuts alone would suggest.
Multicolor is what the pattern needs
Two of the three pieces here are described as multicolor and one as white, which is the color field describing a pattern rather than picking a shade.
A figure needs at least two colors to exist, so a patterned cement tile is multicolor almost by definition. The white piece is the exception: a pattern in one color against its own ground, where the relief of the honed surface and the joint between colors carries the design instead of contrast.
Where three products is enough
A powder room floor, a backsplash panel, an entry, a hearth and a band inside a plain field.
A pattern this strong is used in one place at a time, so a short list is not a limitation. Cement tile carries the wider range including the ledger panels.
