Porcelain Floor Tiles

Glazed and through body porcelain

A glazed porcelain carries its decoration in a layer applied to the surface before firing. A through body porcelain has the same material and the same color running all the way from face to back.

On a wall the difference is academic. On a floor it decides what a deep scratch or a chipped edge looks like: on a through body piece the damage is the same color as the surface, and on a glazed one it shows the body underneath. Neither is better in the abstract and a glaze allows patterns a through body cannot.

What the finish means on a floor

Matte leads this range, then polished, honed and lappato, with a small group whose finish field reads R11 textured.

Each behaves differently underfoot and in light. Matte scatters light and hides most of what a floor collects. Polished returns it and shows more. Lappato is ground only at the high points, so it catches light in patches. The R11 label describes a textured face supplied by the maker; this catalog publishes no slip figure of its own and a specification that needs one takes it from the producer.

12x24 carries the range

12x24 is the largest group by a wide margin, then 12x12, with a set of metric formats written in inches behind them.

It is the size most interior floors are laid in because of where it sits: large enough to cut the joint count noticeably against a 12x12, small enough that a slightly uneven floor underneath does not fight it and one person can handle a piece.

The mosaic group and what it is for

A substantial part of this range is mosaic sheet rather than field tile, in the same faces as the tiles beside them.

That is the shower pan and the bathroom answer. A pan is dished toward its drain on every side, so a sheet of small pieces bends into it where a rigid format would have to be cut apart first. Having the sheets in the same series means the pan and the floor around it stay in one face.

Thickness, and the three figures here

This range runs at 25/64, 3/8 and 5/16 inch, which are 10, 9.5 and 8 millimeters.

Ten millimeters is the ordinary interior floor thickness and most of the range sits there. The thinner pieces are lighter and easier to handle and they need a flatter base under them. The figure matters most at a threshold, where this floor meets whatever is in the next room.

Marble look leads the effects

Marble look is the largest effect here, then concrete, fabric, stone and terrazzo looks, in whites, grays, blacks and beiges.

That order is the same one a general porcelain page shows, and a floor changes nothing about it: the stone people want underfoot is the stone they have always wanted. What a floor does change is the finish, since a polished marble look on a large floor behaves very differently from the same face on a wall.

Where this sits in the range

Porcelain tile is the material across every use, and floor tile covers floors across every material.

Porcelain shower tile carries the bathroom enclosure and porcelain moldings the trim that finishes an edge.