We’re going to be talking all about tile, but more specifically the difference between ceramic and porcelain. This is one of those areas that people come into our store confused, all the time about what the difference is between porcelain and ceramic are and which they need, and I find people have a lot of misinformation and they’re under the wrong impressions regarding what these products actually are.
Keep it somewhat simple for you guys, without going into too much technical detail and really help you, hopefully, gain a little bit of peace of mind when you go out and look for tile floors, because tile is one of the staple products for the flooring In your home and the floors in your house is generally one of the largest expenses that you have in a remodel.
So it’s worth knowing what you really need, not sacrificing not compromising on what you want, just because you’re under the impression that you have to have a particular type of product, and that goes with every product category.
Ceramic Vs Porcelian
It’s getting harder and harder to tell just by looking at the surface on these products, if you’re, looking at a ceramic or if you’re, looking at a porcelain, because the technologies on Both are improving so rapidly the ability for the manufacturers to print the images on create textures use, actual digital printing.
That gives a tremendous amount of depth to the products both are improving really well. So, in terms of looking at the surface, we can find great options in both products. What is a ceramic and what is a porcelain? Well, both products are fired, clays, so the way that we actually measure it in terms of certifying a tile as a US certified porcelain tile is based off of how much moisture it absorbs how dense the final product is.
So we start with clay in both instances. We’re firing them in a kiln to bake them in both instances, but how finely the clay is ground and how high the temperatures and consistent the temperatures are in the baking process is what ends up giving us the density required for a tile to be certified by U.S standards as a porcelain and that’s where we want to be really careful when we’re looking at products that are being marketed as porcelain. But don’t have that U.S certification, that they are truly a porcelain tile by our standards, not by the place that was making it, because they can call it whatever they want, but it doesn’t mean that it actually meets our criteria for what is a porcelain tile.
How To Differentiate Between The Two?
Now, traditionally, we’ve had some kind of basic ways that we could look and see the difference between ceramic and porcelain by looking at the back of the tile, because, most of the time, our ceramics were kind of this red or brown-backed uh body of the tile And then it’s got the actual glaze on the surface.
Porcelain tiles typically would have a white or a grey back of the tile, but they’re still glazed. So this is one of the areas that people have a misconception about. I get people that come in constantly.
That say i need a porcelain, because i want to make sure that if I chip it, the colour is still in the body of the tile, that is not the case with porcelain. Porcelain is still a glazed product unless it specifically says that it is a through the body or a colour body tile.
As you can see, the back of this product is not the same as the front, and if you chip it, you are not going to see the colour on the top going through this product now, even with our colour body porcelains.
If it has a lot of variation or design on the top of the tile, the overall predominant colour may be baked through there, but it doesn’t mean that the design is literally going all the way through the body of the tile.
What it does mean is you have a very, very dense product, so it’s going to be hard to chip it, but there is not a product out there that isn’t capable of chipping under just the right set of circumstances.
However, most of these products are installed properly. It’s harder to chip them than you think you’re, oftentimes, more likely to break what you dropped than you are to chip the tile. So, as i said, the biggest difference between the ceramics and the porcelains is the level of density that is attained in the finished product and one of the ways that you can actually test this on.
Your own in-person is, if you grab two tiles, that are the same size, and same dimensions like the two that I just showed you, where we have a 12 inch by a 24 inch. I’M dealing with two products that are the same dimensions, they’re the same thickness, but one is actually heavier than the other, and the reason for that is it’s a denser product, there’s more clay baked into that same space.
So, even though they’re the same size, one ends up as a heavier product, that’s kind of how you can actually feel that density in person, but which product is better well objectively? If we’re talking about certified porcelain that actually meets the requirements to be classified as such, in terms of that level of density and its moisture absorption, then porcelain is the stronger product.
But again, that’s assuming that we’re talking about a product that is certified porcelain and not just a product, that’s being called the porcelain but doesn’t actually meet those requirements. So do you need a porcelain tile for your home? No generally, not if you find a ceramic that you absolutely love, there’s no reason for you to rule it out strictly because it’s a ceramic, because a lot of the ceramic products are so much better than what they were 20 years ago.
And if you go into a store and you’re looking at these racks, where you have all the cards that you can flip through, they’ll tell you right on there, if they’re approved for flooring or if they’re approved only for walls and as long as it’s showing that It’S approved for residential floors.
You can have complete confidence that installed correctly. That’S going to do what you need it to do. So if you fall in love with ceramic go for it, don’t be afraid that you are going to have more issues with it because realistically, in today’s products, you’re not likely to see the real strong benefits of the porcelain over the ceramic until you start putting them In specific environments, maybe that’s high level commercial traffic environments or maybe it’s a situation where you wanted to put it outside and that moisture absorption can help protect that product from ever cracking.
If there was to be freezing temperatures with a lot of moisture in the air, that is something that can theoretically happen, but those are kind of off the wall circumstances. So as long as we’re talking about putting it in your house find something that you like make sure it’s approved for the area that you want to put it on and then go for it and, like i said most of that, information is going to be provided
Bathroom Tiles
This product here is called trellis oak and i actually have this product in my own home in a bathroom.
I actually have this lattice mosaic in the shower floor with the larger wood planks in the main part of the bathroom floor and the colour that I used was actually amber.
I love this product, but if we look right here, we actually will see the symbol that we want and it’s going to be. The word certified porcelain, the porcelain, the o will be shaped like a tile uh laid on a diagonal and then right underneath it it’s going to say 0.
5 or less water absorption. So that’s the little symbol here that we are looking for for certified porcelain and if it’s really important to you that you know for sure, that’s what you’re getting then look to see this, because just because somebody’s telling you that a tile is porcelain doesn’t Mean that it meets this standard for them to be able to actually put that on here and then, if we look at these boards, generally they’re going to have all the other information that we need they’re going to tell us right on here.
What’s the applications that these are supposed to be used for it’ll tell us if it’s designed to be put on a floor or if it’s a tile, that’s only designed to be put on a wall because it just doesn’t have the strength to be walked on Product – and you know there are some that are designed as just strictly wall tiles.
You will find most products that are strictly a wall. The tile will be ceramic even if they have a coordinating floor tile. That’s a porcelain they’ll make the wall tile, sometimes in different shapes and that same product same color, same style will be offered as a wall tile in a ceramic when the floor was a porcelain and in addition to that, you’re going to have some other characteristics of The product that talk about scratch, resistance, hardness slip, resistance, a lot of things that are measured in technical terms, where you’re not going to really know what they mean.
Nor should you need to, I would say, probably the one that’s the most common might be the slip resistance if you’re putting it in a wet area, but just know even products with a lot of texture when they get wet, you can easily still hydroplane on them.
So if that’s a concern to you, make sure you’ve got your bath mats and things like that in those wet areas, so that you don’t risk yourself slipping, because even the products that feel rough to the touch can be slick when wet.
So, as I mentioned before, the technology in both the porcelains and the ceramics has dramatically improved over the years and in many cases we now have ceramics that not only are much better than the ceramics of 10 years ago.
But a lot of these ceramics are actually leagues beyond what porcelains were 10 to 15 years ago, when we start talking at least the kind of entry level porcelains of that time. So here we have an example from inner ceramic tile, which is a company out of mexico, and they make all ceramic products, but they have a technology now that they’re referring to as dura body ceramic and it allows for them to get a much denser ceramic tile.
Still isn’t a porcelain, but it’s a very strong ceramic product and they couple that with now digital printing technologies on their surface. So the ceramics have a much much better look and they have a lot of improved texture.
The amount of variation from product to product isn’t improved dramatically, so I would have no reservations for my own home about picking a product out of this line, even if it’s a ceramic that I otherwise liked, because I’ve seen these down and they look phenomenal another area That I find there’s a lot of confusion, surrounds rectified porcelains and generally when somebody comes in and they tell me they’re looking for a rectified porcelain, it’s a term that they’ve heard without it truly being explained to them, but most of the time they’re simply looking for A square edged tile because they’re trying to achieve smaller, grout joints.
That’s generally the reason that somebody asks me or is insistent that they have that it’s because they think that’s how they’re going to achieve the tightest grout joints when we’re talking about square edged tiles.
The whole edge from top to bottom goes completely up and down. It doesn’t pitch out which a lot of tiles do. They have a slight draft, so the bottom of the tile. If you’re scooting the two pieces together, the bottom hits before the top does, and that prohibits us from getting those really really tight, grout joints where the square edges, we can bring them a little bit closer together.
That, however, does not mean that that tile should be installed with the grout joint that you may want so each product each manufacturer has recommended grout joint thicknesses for their tiles, that you really should follow, because a lot of the products, if you get them too close Together, it’s going to create issues with the crowning where some of the tiles are not perfectly flat.
Your subfloor is never perfect, so the closer and closer you get. Those tiles together will actually make potential for lippage and those little high spots uh more problematic. It’s it’s going to increase the likelihood that you see a little bit more of those inconsistencies, so the grout does serve a purpose.
My recommendation is: to stick to the thickness of the grout joint that the manufacturer recommends for that specific tile and also consult that with your installer in terms of what they think they can achieve with confidence for you on that grout joint.