What’s important to know about tile types, sizes, styles and grout.
The world of tile is wide and spectacular, with a seemingly endless family of product choices and style options.
Tile flooring and wall products are offered in a broad range of textures, patterns and sizes.
When combined with a spectrum of grout and glaze options, they offer significant design options for any room in virtually any home style.
The goal is to know what is the best combination of aesthetics, style and performance that fits your floor covering budget.
To help you know, shop and decide, we offer this section.
Here we explain types, sizes and styles and offer you all the information you need to make smart choices.
We invite you to join us as we describe the beautiful and vast world of tile styles.
A universe so large there’s bound to be a tile perfect for your home and lifestyle.
The basic 3: transforming, timeless and tasteful.
There are 3 types of tile: glazed, unglazed and porcelain. Understand them and you’re home free.
Sizes, and selection, abound.
Tile size takes its cue from the room size.
When considering what size tile would be appropriate for your given space, start by determining the size of the room.
Often times, people think that small rooms call for small tile. That is not necessarily true. In fact, incorporating a larger size tile in a smaller room will visually increase the size of the space. And fewer grout lines will help create a cleaner surface appearance.
Conversely, using a tile size that’s too small creates more grout joints that may make the floor look too busy, again depending on the size of the space.
The bottom line here is that, as with all design elements, scale plays an important role in creating a room’s overall balance. So, please consider it carefully to achieve your desired look.
Tile can take on many disguises.
The look of natural stone is very popular but some consumers prefer tile over stone due to price and maintenance considerations.
Some of these smaller tiles also come in different shapes, such as hexagon, so feel free to let your imagination run free.
Patterned borders made up of different size tiles or different colors can create beautiful looks.
Simple variations in color, shape or size can be patterned within a room, or across several adjoining rooms.
When creating a pattern with different tiles, you should know that the more prominent tile that is throughout the largest areas is called the “field tile”.
Let your imagination run free, tile will keep up to it. Combining styles and patterns of tile flooring with countertop and wall products can also create beautiful designs, and give your room an aesthetic balance.
Floor and wall tiles may be designed to look similar, but floor tiles are generally thicker and are textured to make them safer to walk on.
Wall tile styles are typically designed to have higher gloss, and are manufactured in smaller sizes. The large floor tiles are not designed to adhere to walls.