Tips for Choosing the Perfect Tile

Tile is a beautiful, durable material that's at home in every room in the house. From the shower floor to the bathroom walls, kitchen backsplash, fireplace surround, or entryway, tile looks great, lasts for years, is available in a huge range of colors, styles, sizes, shapes, and textures.

The best way to make the most of your tile is to educate yourself about the many options available to you. In this post we're going to talk about ceramic versus porcelain tile, the brands we love, where to use tile in your home, and in general, how to get the biggest bang for your buck when choosing the perfect tile.

Porcelain Versus Ceramic Tile: Comparing Two Materials

For many consumers, when discussing tile, the terms porcelain and ceramic are used interchangeably. It's understandable, as both ceramic and porcelain tiles are used for the same applications, installed the same way, and have pretty much the same pros and cons as flooring or wall materials.

While both ceramic and porcelain are both "ceramics" as they are both rigid tiles made from clays hardened by heat, porcelain occupies its own category because it meets certain specifications. It pretty much boils down to water absorption. Both typically receive a glaze that can make them difficult to distinguish them from each other.

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Porcelain consists of a special kaolin clay mixture that typically has quartz and feldspar mixed in. They are generally fired at high temperatures from 2200 – 2500 degrees. That makes porcelain a dense, fine-grained, smooth tile that is more impervious to water than ceramics. Porcelain is perfect for wet environments like shower walls or bathroom floors and is often made with a texture that reduces slip and fall risks.

Ceramic tile uses a coarser clay with a lower ratio of kaolin clay and lacks other additives. Ceramic tile is also fired at a much lower temperature – no more than 1650 degrees. Ceramics can be more prone to water infiltration than porcelain, although when glazed, the difference is minimal.

Porcelain tiles have an edge when it comes to appearance, and offer better water resistance. Porcelain is also a denser material making it more durable than most ceramics. Both offer good heat resistance, making them ideal for countertops. Porcelain, however, is available in more colors, patterns, and surface finishes, including realistic natural finishes that resemble real stone, or wood flooring.

Types of Tile

Tile is a favorite material with both homeowners and designers. It's been used for centuries, and even though other manmade materials have gained popularity, tile is still valued for its incredible beauty and affordability.

There are basically four main classes of tile: ceramic/porcelain, glass, quarry, and stone.

Ceramic/Porcelain

These types of tile are the least expensive and offer an infinite variety of choices. As we described in the last section, both ceramic and porcelain are made with natural materials, shaped into tiles, and fired. The higher the temperature, the stronger the tile. Ceramic and porcelain are often glazed and then fired a second time.

Glass Tile

Glass first became trendy in the early 2000s and is best if you're looking for a fun, showy, vertical surface. It's often used as a kitchen and bathroom backsplash material and is a great choice for vertical surfaces that get a lot of attention. Because it cracks under pressure, glass mosaic is not a great choice for flooring. Glass has a sparkling beauty you won't find in other materials.

Quarry Tile

Quarry tile is often used as outdoor flooring and indoors as flooring in hallways and foyers. In the past quarry tile was mined in quarries, cut, ground, and polished. Today, modern manufacturing using the extrusion method is making vitreous clay time that is almost as hard as a naturally mined quarry stone. Because it's rough, quarry tile is perfect for flooring as it provides excellent slip resistance.

Natural Stone Tile

Nothing is as beautiful as natural stone. Stone tile is great for the kitchen and bathroom, both as flooring and as a wall covering. Granite tile looks great but can crack and like quarry tile, it's porous so it requires annual re-sealing. Granite and marble are both better on the walls, or as countertops, but can also be used as flooring, however, they are easily scratched. Nothing is quite as luxurious as heated natural stone floors in the bathroom!

Your designer can help you to better understand the pros and cons of each of the four families of tile. They can not only help you to choose the right material to fit your budget and meet your functional and aesthetic needs, they can help you choose the right tile for the job at hand.

Tile Size and Best Use

Tile has a number of uses throughout your home. Whether it's flooring or a backsplash in the kitchen, or the shower surround or threshold-free shower floor, it's important to choose the right size and material for the job. Your designer or design-build contractor can help you to pick the material that best meets the needs of your project. Each tile has specific uses where it really shines, for example:

• Small patterns like mosaic tile, is great for wet spaces like the shower floor as it helps reduce slipping. It's also excellent in the kitchen as a backsplash material.

• Shower walls, bathroom floors, and kitchen floors can handle a larger pattern and size of tile.

• The kitchen backsplash is subjective. The most important factor is to consider scale. You want to make sure that the pattern you choose has the appropriate scale so it doesn't distract or look too busy.

When planning your tile work, along with size, the material you choose is important. For example, in a wet area like the bathroom, porcelain tile is a great choice as it is impervious to water. Glass mosaic is a great look when used as a backsplash in the bathroom or kitchen. Your designer can help you determine the perfect material to meet your aesthetic needs.

A Quick Word About Large Scale Tile...

One of the newest materials available that are taking the design world by storm is a large format tile. Typically it is made of either porcelain, or engineered stone and is great for shower walls, backsplashes, and waterfall edge countertops.

Large format tile is durable, beautiful, and available in various slab sizes. The 118”x59” and 126”x63” slabs add low-maintenance, easy-clean style to kitchens, baths, and outdoor rooms. MSI’s Stile® Porcelain slabs are smooth, impervious to germs and bacteria, and are rated for food safety. In addition, Gauged porcelain resists stains from nail polish, food coloring, wine, coffee, and tea.

Large-format porcelain is suitable for almost every interior and exterior project including flooring, accent walls, showers, backsplashes, countertops, and fireplace surrounds. They allow you to create a beautiful, new look in a fraction of the time and a fraction of the cost of buying and installing stone or tile.

Getting the Most Bang for Your Buck

Tile can be a very trendy material, for example, today designers are experimenting with various patterns that while currently popular, will most likely fall out of favor when the next big thing comes along. Here at Toulmin, we feel that patterns like Picket, Arabesque, 3D Mosaics, and Interlocking tile while popular today, will quickly fade, leaving you with a dated look in just a short time. Tile is not a remodeling upgrade that you'll want to replace often. It's time-consuming to install and costly.

We believe that sticking with a classic pattern that has stood the test of time is a better investment. For example, subway tile is a classic material that can be installed in several different patterns to add interest. Something as simple as a crisp white subway tile with a charcoal gray grout can add a lot of visual interest to your design and is timeless. Another classic material that will stand the test of time is natural stone. However, if you don't want to have to perform the maintenance necessary to keep your natural stone tile looking new, consider a material like natural patterned porcelain tile which gives you the look with a low-maintenance material.

At Toulmin, we have relationships with some of the top manufacturers in the industry. We recommend these top brands to our clients:

• Soci

• Daltile

• MSI 

• Adex 

• Speartek

• Stones & More 

• Tarmak

  
  

Each offers a wide selection of high-quality, aesthetically beautiful tiles perfect for any application. Our design team can help you to choose the perfect tile product to meet your stylistic and functional needs.

If you're planning a remodeling project and you live in the West Central Alabama area, why not give the design experts at Toulmin Kitchen & Bath a call at (205) 366-0807. We're always happy to answer any questions you might have and can help you to choose the perfect tile and design the perfect space to meet your unique aesthetic and functional needs! Call us today and arrange a free no-obligation consultation to discuss your project.