Honed or polished underfoot
Polished is ground and buffed until the surface reflects, which deepens the color and makes the veining read at its strongest. Honed stops one step earlier, at a flat matte face. Those two carry this range in roughly equal numbers, with a small group of tumbled and textured faces behind them, and the two leaders answer different rooms.
On a wall this is purely a look. On a floor it stops being one, because a polished surface keeps a record of everything that touches it. Fine scratches from grit under a shoe register on a polish and are hard to find on a hone, and the same is true of an etch, and it is the reason honed marble is specified for floors as often as polished.
Why a polish shows more
A polish is not a coating over the stone. It is the stone's own surface refined with finer and finer abrasives until it reflects, and anything that roughens that refined surface interrupts the reflection. That is the mechanism, and it applies to a scuff from grit as much as to the chemical marks the marble tile page explains.
So the same event produces two results on two finishes of one stone. On a polish the roughened area registers as a visible patch; on a hone there was never a reflection there to lose. That is the single reason this range is stocked in two finishes, and it is why the finish gets decided before the stone does.
Choosing a white for a floor
Calacatta is the largest name here, then Carrara, Arabescato and the plain whites, and the marble tile page describes what separates them. The floor question is different from the wall one: a floor is seen at a shallow angle across a large area, so a heavy vein that looks dramatic on a sample reads as a repeating event once it covers a room, and a fine even figure like Carrara does not.
Crema and the beiges sit at the warm end of the same group. Where a floor and a counter are being chosen together, the marble slabs range is the counter side, and what usually works is a plain floor under a figured counter, or a figured floor under a plain one.
The grays and blacks
The gray and black names are set out on the marble tile page. What is specific to a floor is the tonal consequence: a dark marble holds a room down where a pale one lifts it, and it shows dust where a mid-tone hides it.
What a dark floor hides is the thing a pale one shows most, which is anything that darkens. The two forgive opposite faults, and the mid grays here sit between them for exactly that reason: less dust than a black, less staining than a white.
Formats on a floor
12x24 leads, then 12x12 and 18x18 almost level with each other. 12x12 is the traditional square, 18x18 the larger version of it, and 12x24 the rectangle that suits a hallway or a room longer than it is wide.
The 3x6 and 4x12 pieces in the size list are wall formats that appear here because the same stone supplies both. A subway-format marble on a floor is unusual and it is not wrong; it makes a great many joints, which on a floor is a decision about how much grout to look at.
Thickness across the range
Three eighths of an inch is the usual thickness, and 1/2 inch the second group. The half-inch pieces are usually the larger formats, since a bigger tile needs more body to survive being handled and cut.
A few pieces at 3/4 and 1 1/4 inch appear on the same list and they are pavers, cut thick for outdoor load. They share the material and nothing else.
A marble floor after twenty years
It has a patina. Fine surface wear runs along the routes people walk, edges soften, and the odd etch appears near a kitchen. In an old European building that surface is the reason the floor gets admired, and the households happiest with marble are the ones who wanted that.
The point worth being clear about is that this is a choice somebody made in advance. Marble also has a route back that a printed surface does not: a stone surface can be reground and repolished, which is what happens to the old floors that get admired. On a floor of thin tiles with grout joints between them that is a specialist job and a different proposition from refinishing a slab.
The porcelain question on a floor
On a wall this comparison barely matters, and on a floor it is the whole decision, because a floor is the one surface where marble's softness registers. Porcelain is fired harder than any carbonate stone, so it changes far more slowly under the same traffic. The same hallway in marble will have a patina inside a decade, and whether that is the point or the problem is the question.
The marble look porcelain range is the other half of that decision, and marble tile covers the walls and the rest of the house.
Which rooms marble floors go in
An entry, a hallway, a bathroom and a formal room are where most of this range ends up, and the reason is the balance of traffic against acid. A hallway sees feet and little else. A bathroom sees water, which darkens a porous stone while it is wet and leaves as it dries, and cleaning products, which can leave a mark that does not.
A kitchen is where the balance genuinely tips either way, and the kitchen tile page sets out what else answers that room.
