What honed marble is
Honed marble is marble ground flat to a smooth, matte face and stopped before the polish. It feels smooth to the hand but reflects very little light, so the veining reads softer and the color usually a shade lighter than the same stone polished.
Marble is calcium carbonate, a soft stone that reacts with acids. Lemon juice, vinegar or wine leave a dull etch mark on any marble. On a polished tile that mark is a matte spot on a shiny face and catches the eye; on a honed tile the whole face is already matte, so the same mark blends in. That is the main reason honed is the usual finish for marble floors, and why it is chosen for kitchens and bathrooms where the stone gets used every day.
The honed vs polished marble checklist goes through the choice room by room.
Floor tile by stone and size
Honed marble field tile on this page comes in 12x24, 18x18 and 12x12, with 24x24 and 6x12 in a few stones. Most field tiles are 3/8 inch thick and some are 1/2 inch, with a few at 5/8 or 3/4 inch, so check the thickness on each product when two stones meet in one floor.
- White with little veining: Thassos White Extra and Siberian White.
- White with a fine gray vein: Carrara T, Italian Carrara, White Carrara, Bianco Dolomiti, Bella White and Alpina White.
- White with bold veining: Calacatta Gold, Calacatta T and Statuarietto.
- Gray: Bardiglio Light, Athens Grey Light, Silver Horizon, Silver Sky and Nordic Drift.
- Black: Black honed, and Nero Marquina Premium, a black marble with white veining.
- Beige: Royal Beige and Crema Marfil Select.
Within the whites, the veining decides the room more than the shade of white does. A Thassos floor reads as one calm sheet of stone; Carrara spreads a fine gray vein evenly across every tile and sits quietly next to wood cabinets; Calacatta and Statuarietto change noticeably from tile to tile, and that movement is the point of choosing them. Honing softens the contrast between vein and ground, so a bold Calacatta looks a little calmer honed than polished.
Two checkerboard sets come ready to lay: Black with Siberian White in 12x12, and Bianco Dolomiti with Black in 18x18. Both sit with the rest of our black and white floor tile.
Subway, brick and wall pieces
Honed marble wall tile comes in two families here. The small 2 3/4x5 1/2 brick is cut in Carrara T, White Carrara, Thassos, Siberian White, Black and Royal Beige. The longer subway is 3x12 in Bardiglio Light and Royal Beige and 4x12 in Bianco Dolomiti. The full set of marble subway sizes is on the marble subway tile page.
Elevations is a wall line in Calacatta T and Royal Beige made of honed pieces in mixed heights, for a textured feature wall in a single stone.
Mosaics for shower floors
Honed marble mosaics are the largest group on this page. Hexagon leads, then herringbone, then 1x1 and 2x2 squares, with penny rounds, chevron, basketweave, arabesque and picket shapes, and fluted Valentino Fluto and Milano Ribbo panels.
Most of the mosaics carry a shower floor rating in their listings. Small pieces follow the slope of a shower floor to the drain and put more grout joints underfoot, and a honed face is not glassy, which is why a honed mosaic is the usual pairing with a honed field tile on the bathroom floor. The marble hexagon tile and marble herringbone tile pages narrow the list to one shape.
Kitchens, walls and fireplaces
On a kitchen backsplash a honed subway or herringbone keeps under-cabinet lights from glaring off the wall, and etch marks from cooking splashes blend into the matte face. On a fireplace surround or a feature wall, a honed face lets the veining carry the wall without the reflections a polished stone throws back at the room.
Marble is cut from quarry blocks, so tiles from one lot share a closely related color and veining, while a later lot can sit a shade off. A photo of a polished tile says little about the same stone honed, which is why samples are offered on most of this page.
Related pages
This page is the honed part of marble tile, our full marble range in every finish. The Carrara T honed and Calacatta T honed collections gather one stone across its sizes and mosaics, and 12x24 marble tile shows that one size in honed and polished together.
