Choosing Tiles For Your Home

Choosing tiles for your home is one of the fun parts of a renovation or new build, isn’t it? There are so many shapes, sizes, patterns, colours and textures out there for you to find exactly what you’re after and what best reflects your personality.

But it’s also easy to become overwhelmed with all those choices and the abundance of technical expressions.

Ceramic tile versus porcelain tile

Well, let’s start with what they both have in common. They are both made up of clay, quartz sand and water and you won’t be able to spot the difference in appearance. But the clay in the porcelain tile, which is also called a vitrified or fully vitrified tile, is a lot more refined and purified. It is also fired at higher temperatures and with greater pressure that makes the tile denser.

Perfect tile for your interiors

Due to those differences in materials and manufacturing processes, porcelain tiles are:

• harder wearing and stain resistant,
• more versatile when it comes to intricate designs, textures, colours and sizes,
• suitable for both indoors and outdoors,
• more expensive than ceramic tiles.

Beautiful and hard wearing tiles for your spaces

Porcelain tiles are more versatile when it comes to intricate designs like this metallic tile used for the bathroom renovation in Castle Hill.

Within the porcelain tile category, we can further distinguish between two types:

1. through-body porcelain
2. glazed porcelain

Chip in floor tile

The through-body porcelain tile carries the tiles pattern and colour through the whole thickness. If you accidentally chip the tile, the colour keeps on going underneath and the chip will remain nearly invisible.

A glazed porcelain has the glaze applied to its face. Meaning that a chip shows a different colour underneath drawing unwanted attention to this imperfection. This is also what happens with a ceramic tile.

Lappato tiles popular

Lappato tiles are probably the most popular tiles used today. The name comes from the Italian word meaning ‘semi-polished’.

Lappato tiles have a softly polished finish which is a higher sheen than matt tiles but a more gentler finish than traditional glossy tiles.  This is achieved by polishing the tile’s surface with an abrasive wheel but not long enough to attain the luster of a typical polished tile.

These tiles tend to be more slip resistant that polished porcelain tiles which makes them a popular choice to use thoughout your home.

Wrapping it up – what tile to choose for your home

When you’re on a budget, ceramic tiles for your bathroom and kitchen splashback are just fine. Ensure you choose a rectified ceramic tile which allows a reduced amount of unwanted grouting in between. But if you have kids or dogs, and for your heavy usage areas such as kitchen or hallway floors, you are better off spending the extra Dollars for a through-body porcelain tile that gives you this extra hard wear.