Stay Mainly in the Plane: Ensuring an Even Finish with Porcelain Tile

Are you so meticulous it’s ridiculous? You’re not alone. Architects and designers have to be precise, exacting, and detail oriented in order to achieve a fully realized final design. When it comes to tile surfaces, design professionals must count on suppliers to manufacture products that can achieve the level of aesthetic and practical excellence they want for their projects. A smooth finish with an even and uniform appearance requires that you pay careful attention to two key factors:

1) Face Dimension: look for dimensional consistency
2) Edge Tolerance: look for rectified porcelain tiles

Lippage (an uneven tile surface) has both a safety and an aesthetic implication. On walls, tiles without accurate face dimension – that are warped or uneven – can cause unsightly shadows where thicker tiles are installed above thinner tiles, ruining a clean aesthetic and visually suggesting an installation with less integrity. Worse, on floors, it can be a trip hazard. Keeping your tile floors from having chipping, potential trip hazards and eventual breakage, and keeping your tile walls looking flat and smooth is paramount. While some warping is inevitable due to the inherent properties of porcelain, the best high tech porcelains have a degree of warp so minute it is virtually imperceptible.

To know what level of continuity your finish will have with a given product, look in the manufacturer’s literature for a standard called ASTM C485, developed to decrease the bowing effect in an overall tile installation. This standard calls for tile that has a dimensional consistency that does not exceed plus or minus 0.4 percent.

The second factor for a smooth surface involves minimizing the grout joints. Edge tolerance that allows for a small and tight grout joint helps with the installation’s maintenance schedule as well as its look. Always look for rectified tile, which has been precisely sized so each tile is exactly the same dimension and perfectly square.

All Mosa tiles meet or exceed the requirements of both of these key industry standards, offering an added level of insurance that your finished installation will be sleek and safe.