Black Porcelain Tiles

Slate look leads, and that changes the color

Slate look is the largest effect here, then marble look, concrete, limestone, stone, fabric, resin and quartz looks.

A printed slate is not black; it is a very dark gray with rust, charcoal and blue-black moving through it, because that is what slate does. The color names on this page say so: alongside plain black sit Montauk Black, charcoal, Everest Dark and a dark gray, which are slate and stone names rather than color words.

Why a print needs variation and a solid black does not

Most of the pieces here that publish a figure carry a V3 rating, meaning moderate variation between tiles in the same run.

A genuinely solid black would have no use for that. Variation exists on this page because the tiles are imitating a dark natural stone, and a dark natural stone is never the same twice. The rating is a sign of what the tile is actually copying.

Matte carries the range

Matte leads, then anti-slip, polished, lappato and honed groups.

On a dark tile the finish moves the apparent color further than on any other. Polished reads as deep jet and holds a reflection; matte lifts to a flat charcoal because a scattering surface returns less light. Lappato, ground only at the high points, does both across one face. Black tile and mosaic holds the same color in the other materials.

The anti-slip group and where it sits

A group here carries a finish value reading anti-slip, which describes a textured face supplied by the maker rather than a figure this catalog publishes.

Those pieces concentrate in the floor formats. Nothing here carries a published slip number; a specification that needs one takes it from the producer for that particular tile.

12x24 and 24x48

12x24 leads the size list, then 24x48 and 24x24, with 3x12 and 4x12 strips, 18x36, 18x18 and a 48x48 among the rest.

Dark tiles run large for the same reason pale ones do: fewer joints. The difference is that a joint shows more against a dark field than a pale one, since a pale grout line on a black floor is a drawn grid and there is no way to make it recede except by matching it.

What a dark floor does to a room

It absorbs light where a pale floor returns it, so the room keeps its brightness at eye level and loses it underfoot, and everything standing on the floor reads as an object against a ground.

That is the argument for a dark floor and the warning attached to it. In a room with good daylight it grounds everything; in a dim room it takes away the one surface that could have been helping.

Where black porcelain goes

A hall, a kitchen, a bathroom, a shower, a commercial interior, the dark half of a checkerboard and a wall where a dark stone look is wanted without a dark stone.

Porcelain tile is the material across every color, slate look tile the effect that leads this range, and black kitchen floor tile the room.