Why a single size eventually looks like a grid
Lay one square repeatedly over a large area and the joints line up into two continuous directions. From standing height that reads as a grid, and the larger the area the more it dominates.
A module of several sizes has no such alignment. The joints stop and start, no line runs the length of the floor, and the eye finds a texture instead of a pattern. That is the whole reason these sets exist and it matters most on a terrace or a large hall.
The Versailles pattern
The best known of them is the French or Versailles pattern: typically four sizes arranged into a square module that repeats without an obvious seam between one module and the next.
It comes from seventeenth century French floor work and it has been laid continuously ever since, which is a long run for any layout. An ashlar pattern also appears here, which is the same idea in courses rather than in a square block.
Most of these are paving
The thickness figures tell you where this range lives: the largest group sits at 1 1/4 inches, with a smaller group at 1/2 and a few at 3/4.
An inch and a quarter of stone is paving rather than tile. These are terraces, courtyards, pool surrounds and paths, which is also where a pattern set does the most good, since an outdoor surface is seen from every direction at once and a grid has nowhere to hide. Travertine pavers and marble pavers carry the single-size ranges.
Size fields that say Various
Several listings here give the size as various, random, Versailles pattern or ashlar pattern rather than as a number.
That is accurate rather than evasive. A set has no single dimension, so what matters is the coverage per box and the module the pieces make up. Those two figures are what to compare between one pattern set and another.
The finishes are all worked
Tumbled is the commonest face by a distance, with fine textured, polished, antiqued, sandblasted, fine picked and natural behind it.
Tumbling rolls the pieces with abrasive until the edges round and the faces soften, which does something particular to a multi-size set: it takes the newness off every piece at once and the finished floor reads as though it has been there a long time. That is usually the point of choosing a pattern in the first place.
Travertine and marble carry the range
Travertine is the largest material here, then marble, in grays, beiges, browns and whites.
Both are the stones that French and Italian floor patterns were originally cut from, so the material and the layout arrived together. A pattern set in a modern porcelain exists too and it is a different proposition, since a printed face repeats where a quarried one does not.
Where a pattern set goes
A terrace, a courtyard, a pool surround, an entrance hall, a large kitchen floor and anywhere a single repeated square would read as a grid.
Pavers covers the outdoor stone in single sizes and marble tile the interior material.
