BRE have now completed the generic evaluation of ceramic tiles for commercial floor applications.  These can be found on the BRE’s www.thegreenguide.org.uk. 

Generically, the assessment is:

A+ for ceramic mosaic floor applications (ref: 81258011), and 
B   for ceramic floor tiles (ref: 812580001).

 The annual Spanish-based Cevisama exhibition saw fewer numbers this year. New styles in predominance were largely based on technology and different formats.

Ink jet application is now more widely available and this has generated much more sophisticated and realistic design. In particular, natural stone look alikes produced from some of the Italian and Spanish manufacturers are now extremely difficult to tell from the real thing – the advantages being in the laying and maintenance of these porcelain products. We’ll be featuring some stunning natural look alikes in the coming weeks.

Also in evidence was a shift to 200x600 mm formats. These look stunning when formatted in landscape fashion, or for highlighted features in portrait mode.

Cersaie, the global tile exhibition has just run and the big trend coming through was technologically-based. Ink jet technology printing for tiles is driving high quality natural look-alikes which are barely distinguishable from the real thing but don’t suffer from the fitting and maintaining issues associated with natural stone. Also, thinner tiles, typically 5mm rather than the normal 9mm plus, were particularly evident. While these are ideal for wall applications there are issues about their commercial floor applications. Watch this space for further views on this.

We hope that you like the new layout to our website. We’ve developed it in conjunction with help from architects and specifiers. The search facility in particular allows you to select ranges of interest without wading through product shots that aren’t for your particular project. And the My Project facility allows you to keep a running tab of the tiles and ideas you think are interesting so that you can add them to your other finishings concepts without having to refer back or lose your ideas.

The difficulty of getting traditional quarry tiles from the UK has been evident in the last year. We are pleased to announce that we now have established a supply that can be specified. Ideal in commercial, residential and industrial settings where there is a demand for rustic appeal but with durability and resilience, the range has already proved itself in a recent project we completed for a large fire station.