Tile: Options Grow, Dazzle

Tile for today’s residential applications is offered in a plethora of materials, sizes, shapes, colors and surface treatments. Tile is no longer just used for entryways and/or the “wet areas” (kitchens and baths). There are appropriate tile products for virtually every room of every home built or remodeled. Here are some of the trends in the current marketplace.

Don’t meddle with metal

Creative Metalized Products had always worked with metal, and it wasn’t until approximately four years ago, when it began producing lightweight metal tiles.

“We restructured the company because it had been mainly doing metal architectural elements such as doors, columns and cladding for walls — not decorative tiles,” said Mario Klappholz of Ceramic Consulting Corp. and co-owner of Creative Metalized Products. “We saw a market demand for metal tiles.”

Klappholz believes that today’s metal tiles are not only aesthetically pleasing, but they also solve many architectural and design problems. They are a fraction of the weight of solid metal. Solid metal veneer is only 1/32 of an inch thick, he stated.

“They are used for inlays, decorative purposes for backsplashes in kitchens and bathrooms, decorative walls and for wainscots in hallways of public areas,” said Klappholz. “Basically, we make every size you can imagine — 1 by 1 in., 2 by 2 in., 4 by 4 in., 6 by 6 in. and even larger. We have all sizes and shapes for different applications. As far as design goes, what we offer is limited only to one’s imagination. We can go completely three-dimensional.”

The tiles are available in five metals, including bronze, nickel/silver, brass, copper and iron rust. These metals are offered in many different finishes — gloss, satin, antique, rust and verde, which is a greenish patina that is the result of oxidation.

“We seal all our tiles with a special sealer that we developed with a chemical company,” he said. “It offers water and UV protection, and maintains the tile at the level that you buy it at. Once we seal the tile, it completely stops the aging and oxidation process. Sealing protects the tiles real metal look from changing, and makes maintenance simple and easy.”

According to Klappholz, the tiles are not metal all the way through. “The back of the tile is a resin product,” he said. “The tile surface is metal. It’s a process that gives you real metal as you see it, but the filling and backing is resin to get much better adhesion, and it’s lighter than pure metal. Additionally, these tiles are easy to cut if necessary, making user-friendly installations.”

Stone is not just for castles

While the entire floor covering industry remains strong, stone has continued to lead the way in terms of annual growth rate for the past several years. Stone is becoming more and more important to distributors, dealers and installers, as the industry has quickly adjusted to capitalize on the growing popularity and acceptance of stone, not to mention the chance for the much larger profit margins that stone products can provide. A remarkable 50 percent of stone is imported from world markets, historically led by Italy, but several other countries are chipping away at market share each year as Turkey, Brazil, China and India all enter the mix. Granite, long the most sought after stone product, has begun to slip back to the pack with travertine, slate and limestone’s continued rise in popularity. The No. 1 usage of stone in the United States is now exterior facades, followed closely by flooring and countertop installations. Still, the bottom line remains that stone is one of the hottest markets in the industry today.