Marble Look Tiles

The color field stops being a color

On almost every other page the color field says white, gray or beige. Here most of the values are quarry names: Michelangelo Extra White, Veined Statuario, Calacatta Gold, Calacatta Black, Pearl Grey, Renoir Plus.

That is not a filing quirk. It is what the product is. A marble look tile is sold as a specific stone, not as a color with veins in it, and the name is the first thing to read because it tells you which original the print is aiming at.

Why white carries the range

White is over half of this range, well ahead of gray and beige, and which marbles became famous is why. Carrara, Calacatta, Statuario and Thassos are all white or near-white, so a printed marble aiming at recognition prints a white one.

The dark faces are a much smaller group and they behave differently: a Calacatta Black or a Marquina print has a near-black ground with sharp white lines, which is a higher contrast image and a harder one to print convincingly.

A vein runs, so the repeat shows

This is the calculation that matters most on this page. A printed range is made from a set number of faces, and how visible the repeat is depends on whether the pattern gives the eye a line to follow. A marble vein is exactly that line.

So a marble look shows its repeat more readily than any other printed face. The figure to look for is how many different faces a series carries, and where a maker publishes it, that number predicts how a large floor will read better than any photograph of a single tile does.

More polished here than in the other looks

Matte is the larger finish group here and polished is close behind it, a much higher polished share than a stone look or a wood look carries. The reason is the original: marble is the stone people picture polished, so a matte marble look answers a different brief from a polished one.

What a polished porcelain face does and costs is set out on the glazed porcelain page. What is specific to a marble look is that the polish is part of the imitation and not a finish choice laid on top of it.

Which marble the print is aiming at

Carrara is the fine gray-veined stone and the quietest of the group. Calacatta has a brighter ground and heavier, more separated veins, usually with gold or warm gray in them. Statuario sits between the two with a very white ground. Michelangelo and Renoir are supplier series names, not quarries.

The marble tile page sets out what those names mean in the quarried stone, which is worth reading alongside this one: a print named Calacatta is aiming at a stone with real variation in it, and knowing the target tells you whether the print has hit it.

What the shade rating says here

The shade rating across most of this range is V3. On the published scale V1 is near identical, V2 slight, V3 moderate and V4 substantial, so V3 sits in the middle: visible differences from one tile to the next without the wholesale color swings of a V4.

That is the right place for a marble look to sit. A quarried marble varies, so a series with no variation in it reads flat across a floor, while a V4 on a veined face gives tiles that do not look related. The tile page sets out the scale across the rest of the catalog.

Formats and the panel end

12x24 is the size this range is built on, followed by 24x48 and 24x24, plus a mosaic group and a set of very large pieces at the top end. A veined face wants the larger formats for a reason the pattern dictates: a vein crossing a 24x48 reads as a vein, and the same vein interrupted every twelve inches reads as a texture.

The mosaic sheets here are the exception and they are doing a different job, which is to carry the same face into a niche, a border or a shower floor where a large piece cannot go.

Where a marble look belongs

A floor that would be a problem in real marble is the strongest case: a kitchen, an entry, a bathroom floor, a shower. A vitrified body settles the acid question and the water question that a carbonate stone raises, and the stone look tile page covers the other printed faces on the same bodies.

Where the stone itself is the point, marble tile is the range, and the two are not competing for the same buyer as often as the comparison suggests.