Cross cut, and why the names say so
Travertine forms in horizontal beds, and a block can be sawn two ways. Cut across the beds you get soft cloudy shapes with the voids scattered through them; cut along the beds you get long parallel stripes. The trade calls these cross cut and vein cut.
The color names in this range say cross cut out loud, and that is the version being printed: the cloudy, mottled face rather than the striped one. It is the more familiar of the two and the one most people mean by travertine.
The voids are the difficult part
A real travertine surface has open cavities in it that you can feel. Filling them with a cement or resin and honing the surface flat is what makes the stone usable on a floor, and that filled surface is what a print can actually reproduce.
So the marks on a travertine look tile are pictures of filled voids. A good print gets their scale and their distribution right and puts a faint tonal difference where the fill sits, which is exactly what the stone does. Travertine tile sets out what filling is.
Most of this range is outdoor paving
A large part of this page is 20 mm paving and the trim that goes with it, rather than interior field tile. Those are structural pieces set on a gravel bed, on sand or on pedestal supports, bonded to nothing at all.
Travertine is one of the two stones that paved Mediterranean terraces and pool surrounds for centuries, so an outdoor porcelain aiming at that look is aiming at the stone that was already doing the job. Porcelain pavers is the outdoor range and Frontier20 porcelain the line most of this depth belongs to.
Pool coping and the edge
Pool copings sit here alongside the pavers, which is the point of a travertine look outdoors. A coping caps the pool edge and the deck runs away from it, and both have to arrive in the same face.
Real travertine has been the default pool coping for decades. The printed version answers the same brief in a body that takes up almost no water. Pool and spa paving explains how an edge is assembled.
Matte, with almost nothing else
Matte carries this range nearly without exception, with a handful of polished and anti-slip faces behind it.
Travertine is a matte stone. Polished travertine exists and it is a minority product even in real stone, so a printed range aiming at the familiar look has very little reason to gloss its face.
The trim that comes with an outdoor line
Moldings are the single largest product type on this page: bullnose pieces, bases and the narrow 3x24 and 3x18 strips that finish an edge, all printed to match the paving they belong to.
Outdoors that trim does real work. A terrace has steps, a raised edge, a threshold at a door and a change of level somewhere, and each of those needs a piece with a finished front. A paver on its own leaves a sawn edge showing at every one of them.
Quarry names in the color list
The color names here are travertine trade names, including Scabas, which is a multicolored Turkish travertine, alongside classic cream, silver and white cross cut descriptions.
Those names are useful rather than decorative. They tell you which quarry's look a range is aiming at, and travertines differ far more between quarries than most stones do: a Turkish scabas and a cream Italian travertine are barely the same color.
12x24 and the long formats
The size list is led by 12x24, then 12x12, 24x24 and 12x48, with 24x48, 3x24 and 3x18 trim strips and a 2x2 mosaic.
The 12x48 is worth noting on this effect. A long piece stretches the cloudy cross cut figure sideways, which reads closer to a large stone slab than a square format does, and it puts fewer joints across a terrace.
Where a travertine look goes
A terrace, a pool surround, a path, a courtyard, and indoors a hall, a kitchen or a bathroom that wants the warm stone without the porous one.
For the quarried stone, travertine tile is the range and travertine pavers the outdoor version of it. Limestone look tile is the nearest printed neighbor.
