Floor tiles and the amazing array of choice these days
There are many schools of thought when it comes to selecting the material for your flooring . Polished floor tiles are beautiful but they need a bit of consideration before you make your final choice. There are 3 different materials from which tiles are made, that I will discuss here, tiles made of ceramic, porcelain or natural stone, but they need to be maintained in different ways
It certainly pays to choose with a bit of thought.
Porcelain tiles owe their popularity to their incredible robust nature and resilience, due to the extremely high temperatures at which they are fired. They are often the tile of choice as they do absorb less water than ceramic or natural stone tiles. It is for this reason that you would need to be heedful when using them as a flexible adhesive and grout is essential to avoid problems later on, such as cracking.
They also command good quality cutting equipment, as the rigour of the tile can prove to be very demanding on a tiler’s tile cutting wheel .
Porcelain tiles can look almost identical to real stone . Whether matt or polished floor tiles, the stone replicas are produced in such a way, that it can be a job to differenciate them from a natural product . There is a 100% digital system developed in the last few years that enables the technician to use inks to transmit designs directly to the surface of the tile.
This is such a new system that it make the old screens and rollers look old hat . It is such an amazing invention that unlike traditional screen printed tiles that have a “repeat” pattern cropping up every so often, the new technology can rotate patterns to get fairly close to creating individual tiles.
Tiles made of ceramic are much easier to make . A terracotta tile is glazed and fired. Unfortunately this also makes them slightly vulnerable to damage . However there are new processes that make these ceramic tiles very robust and able to survive the day to day traffic and wear that comes with home life.
The look of natural stone, with its depth and lustre is unbeatable in my view, but it requires the most maintenance. It needs to be maintained and in high traffic areas it can become dull over time. But it still holds for me, a fascination as some stones reveal fossils and crystals that are very hard to copy .
With the correct tile treatment products, natural stone tiles will survive years of traffic and a polished floor tile, maybe a Crema Marfil, is still in my opinion, the most glamorous thing in the world.
