Stylish spaces start with ceramic tile
Not that long ago, exposed concrete floors were considered to be utility grade and largely undesirable. You’d find them in places like the garage, the basement, amd the driveway. People really never thought of them, back so many years ago, as anything more than the most basic surface. They came back in the style though just a few years back. Now people like the look of exposed concrete again. It’s not a brand new trend though, really.
When you actually look at architectural history, exposed concrete was used in different styles throughout the past century. Brutalism is probably the most prominent style using exposed concrete, known for its raw, unfinished concrete surfaces. Modernism also extensively used exposed concrete, particularly in the works of Le Corbusier, possibly the most famous, and the International Style. Other styles where exposed concrete was used include Late Modernism, Critical Regionalism, and contemporary Minimalism. These architectural movements took advantage of concrete’s simple expression of structure and aesthetic, turning what was previously (and later again) considered purely utilitarian into a feature that also doubled as an intentional visual statement.
The ceramic tiles shown in the picture below are made to replicate and exposed and grinded concrete floor. We see actual ground concrete floors like this in bigbox stores. Generally they’ll be coated with a satin or semi-gloss epoxy. Often after thousands of customers have walked across the floor thousands of times and forklifts and other heavy equipment have driven all over it, the satin or semi-gloss sheen begins to wear off and it looks a little bit more matte or dull.
Nonetheless, we, as the retail shopping public, have seen exposed concrete floors like this for decades, but we haven’t been able to replicate the style on elevated or framed floor decks in such an easy way, in the past. Nowadays it’s easy. Contractors like ourselves can just go and install these tiles in kitchens or bathrooms as we would almost any other type of kitchen or bath flooring surface.
From a typical distance, as shown in the picture above, the floor looks almost similar to every other type of average or everyday tile floor, but when you look at the picture below you start to see the detail a little more closely. This picture is from about three feet above the floor. Here you can see, not just the replicated image of ground down aggregate inside of the concrete, but you can also see the finer types of aggregate, almost to the level of detail of grains of sand.
Although it’s fake, it looks very realistic. Most people just a few generations ago, if they were still alive today, might scratch their heads and find it hard to believe that someone would replicate concrete. Back in the days of Trump’s younger years, people replicated things that were expensive like by putting fake gold all over their elevators and condominiums. Our collective design and architectural tastes have changed. This difference has permeated through the majority of our collective conscious. We aren’t really as interested in the gaudy fake opulence, instead we’re now, so polar opposite that we actually appreciate fake utility grade surfaces.
The next picture shows an even closer view and the ground aggregate looks a bit like a Terrazzo floor. The reality is though that ground concrete is actually very similar to terrazzo flooring. Both processes use a zirconium disc and grinding system to level out the surface of cement or epoxy set aggregate. In this case though instead of using epoxy, If This were a actual real cementitious surface, not a replica, it would be portland cement.
You can see these stones even more closely than the next picture below.
We generally recommend choosing a grout color that is similar to the darkest color detail or accent within the field of a tike or stone flooring. In this case, of designing these tiles, although they didn’t follow our advice specifically, they did just what we would recommend. They picked a grout color that meets or matches that darkest range of color within the field of the surface of the ceramic tile.
In this coming week’s blog article, here on our website, we’re going to continue looking at more pictures of this concrete look alike ceramic tile installation. It looks good and we really like it, but it’s interesting that opinions of exposed concrete have changed so much over the decades. In this coming week’s article, we’ll talk about some of the historic tile installation methodologies and the prolific use of a thick set mortar which was very similar to actual concrete.
Dupont Kitchen & Bath Can Help
As dedicated and local DC metropolitan kitchen and bath builders and installers, we pride ourselves on turning your visions into reality. Your kitchen and bathrooms can reflect your unique style and be designed with personalized aesthetics. It can be a process from creative designs to the realization of your dream space. Specializing in kitchen and bath construction, we bring expertise and skills to every project. If you’re contemplating a renovation, upgrade, or modernization in the local market, we’re happy to be your team. Consult with us, and we can start together on a path to redefine and elevate your DC living experience.
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