Products

When choosing your Tiles

When choosing your tiles, bear in mind:

• The environment and the use to which the tiles will be put.
• The tiles' required design and technical functions.

Design considerations

The tiles must fit in with the furnishings and the range of objects, colours, shapes and activities that exist in the environment. They must also match its shape, dimensions, area and lighting, etc. This choice also depends on personal taste and fashion, so it is difficult, and perhaps inappropriate to lay down rules.

Technical considerations

This rule must be followed: the tiles should have technical characteristics and levels of resistance to stress (mechanical, chemical, thermal etc.) that will be adequate for the environment in which the tile will be installed. In other words, the greater the probable stress will be, the higher the performance and the more resistant the tiles must be.

Choosing the right tile for your location

There are tiles for all environments but there is no such tile that is suitable for all purposes. One cannot just choose at random; the customer has to make an informed choice. Let us now look at some practical examples of this. First of all, we will look at the rooms in the home and tiles look good in any room in the house where tiles with special technical and design characteristics have to be chosen. We will then give some tips on choosing the most suitable floor tiles for public buildings in order to show how tile characteristics must match use to which they are to be put.

A Private Dwelling

Floor Tiles in the Entrance

The amount of foot traffic and the stress to which tiles are subjected will differ from one home to another. The entrance is one of the most walked areas of the home, but the amount of wear through, abrasion to which the tiles are affected will depend on the location of the dwelling. The hall in an apartment on the fifth floor of a building will be different from the hall of a house with garden that sand or gravel path leading LIP to the front door. In the latter case, wear through abrasion will be much greater than in the previous example, so tiles with a higher resistance to abrasion should be chosen.

Wall and Floor Tiles in the Bathroom

The floor and walls of the bathroom come in contact with chemical and staining agents (e.g. personal hygiene products, cosmetics, and perfumes). Detergents that contain corrosive chemicals must sometimes be used to carefully clean them and ensure that they are hygienic. Tiles that are highly resistant to chemicals must therefore be chosen. In particular, the tiles must be able to withstand acids and alkaline.

Kitchen Floor and Wall Tiles

The kitchen floor is subjected to the greatest wear and tear of all floors. The kitchen floor tends to be exposed to the most dirt and grease and therefore has to be cleaned more often and more vigorously. It is also the floor that is most likely to have objects falling onto it. Floor tiles must be chosen that have high resistance to mechanical and chemical stress. Kitchen wall tiles are, Of Course subject to little mechanical stress, but they are subject to great chemical stress, which is due both to cooking and detergents. It is therefore important to choose wall tiles that have high resistance to chemical stress (including resistance to acids and alkaline).

Outside Wall and Floor tiles

Choose tiles that are declared and certified to be frost resistant. In general, these are pressed tiles with low water absorption. They may be glazed (single fired) or unglazed (porcelain stoneware, red stoneware) or else they may be extruded tiles (clinker, cotto).

Flooring in a Public Building

The mechanical and chemical stress levels to which the tile surfaces are subjected will normally be higher than in a private home. Design considerations are also important (certainly more so than in a factory environment). Glazed or unglazed tiles must be chosen that are very hard, resistant to abrasion and resistant to staining and chemical attack. Great caution should be exercised before choosing shiny glazed tiles, especially if the area to be covered is directly accessed from the street. The tiles will become exposed to the abrasive dirt. Similar caution should be exercised before choosing porcelain tiles for places like bars and restaurants. A shiny polished surface is very beautiful but it is also more likely to lose the shine than non-polished surfaces.