Stunning Terrazzo-Look Ceramic Tiles for Modern Kitchen and Bathroom Designs
We like the way that ceramic tile can be made in so many different designs nowadays. It can, effectively, as shown here in this example, look similar to real terrazzo. Terrazzo is a type of flooring system, commonly made in the late 19th century and early 20th century. They basically cemented loose stones into a floor area and then grinded that area down. In the finished product, there would be a flat floor with a continuously polished surface where you could see the interesting matrix between the ground and polished stones and the adjacent cementitious binder.
At the base of the wall, you can see another type of tile has been installed. This is either a porcelain or ceramic, in a off-white color. The individual tiles here are a rectangular shape, but they’re set in a square bond. Essentially, the corners of each tile line up with the corners of all of the next tiles. A running bond, in contrast, staggers the corners by 50%.
In this particular installation, there’s no separate wall base. The wall just terminates directly on top of the floor tile. In other cases, such as some of the ones we mentioned in weeks past, there are alternative materials that can be used as a distinct and separate wall base. This particular alternative, running the wall tile directly down to the floor, is better in some ways. A separate wall base, when run in a square peace will also create a ledge for dust to build up. When routed or molded with a decorative top it creates a new design element that may conflict with the more minimalist design shown here.
From a cleaning perspective, it’s always a little bit difficult to clean that inside corner and therein the grout might become a little bit darker with dirt over time. Here though, they’ve used a dark colored grout which complements the darkest colors of the tile. Normally, we would recommend that type of grout color selection. Here though, since the black color is in such contrast to the majority of the tile, we think it accentuates the grout lines too much. There are actually two different stone colors inside of the ceramic tile. Neither of them are real stone, they’re just illustrations on the surface of the tile.
The one color of the illustration looks like a black granite stone. The other one looks like a white or off-white or light gray type color stone. Together, the light color stone with the white color field, make the tile look lighter. Joined with the binder, this gives the tile an overall white background color. Compared to the black grout the light color accentuates the grout lines a bit too much because this is supposed to be a replica or faux type of terrazzo. With a dark grout line, in contrast to the main color of the tile, it ruins the illusion of a terrazzo floor.
It makes the individual pieces of tile distinguished and a real teraza floor is continuous without internal edges or seams. For that reason, this dark grout color is potentially controversial. We don’t agree with that decision, here.
In addition to the very dark black color granite looking stones inside of the mixture, in the design, there are also some more gray color stone illustrations.
We would say that the black illustrations are made to look like granite or marble because you can see that there is also some intended variations of white streaks that are made to look like they’re part of the black granite stone.
Looking closely, you can see more of the different variations within the illustration on the top of the tile. The dark grout is very close in color too the darkest elements of the illustration.
A view of the wall tile follows below. This wall tile is only installed up to a height just above a typical chair rail. This is similar of most types of wainscoting type tile installations. Instead of using a transition or termination strip, they’ve left the top edge of the tile installation exposed and raw. Like an applied lower wall base, that edge becomes a little bit of a dust trap. It’s also possible to see the exposed sandwich of mortar between the tile and the wall. For these reasons, we think it might be better to have used a transition or termination strip to end the tile installation at the top edge of the tile.
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. You can visit our company website at https://dupontkitchenbathdc.com/ Here at our website you will find a simple and convenient web form that you can fill to contact us quickly.
