Your Guide to Commercial Tiles: Large-Formats, Porcelain, Ceramic, Gauged Porcelain & 2cm Pavers
Your flooring and wall-covering choices are some of the largest cost and impact elements in commercial design and can vastly improve the overall aesthetics of any restaurant, office space or commercial lobby when selected properly.
The upfront cost of hard-surface material like tile can appear high, but with a lifetime solution from premium European manufacturers, that cost is amortized over decades of ownership and operation. Centanni Tile is a trusted tile shop in Burnaby BC, taking pride in providing unparalleled services and offering competitive prices in Metro Vancouver.
Our Burnaby tile showroom offers a stunning array of tile options to suit your particular application. From modern to minimalist, for light or heavy traffic, interior or exterior, we’re here to help find a tile assortment that suits your needs and accentuates your brand perfectly.
Looking for something classic with gravitas? As the exclusive suppliers of the Antique Marble Collection of porcelains, you may just discover your perfect match in our iconic marble with vintage looks, available in both polished and natural finishes.
Maybe your brand needs something more contemporary or industrial-chic. In that case, we suggest the Carnaby Collection; clean concrete, subtle spider cracks in the graphic, and mica flecks that pop and sparkle when hit by angled light. Alone or paired with Gerhy Collection with a refined oxide metal look, there are multiple paths to find the perfect solution for your commercial space that marries performance with on-brand aesthetics.
In this article, we walk you through the most popular types of tile options and which works best for your business in different use-cases.
Aesthetics are only half of the equation though – perhaps even the lesser half. Determining the performance needs and developing a strategy through material selection to ease maintenance, keep the users safe and design for life is the most sustainable approach for commercial design. We’ve got over a century of combined tile-industry experience on staff, we’re here to be your concierge – take advantage!
The Slip Resistance Conundrum
If you’re specifying flooring in your commercial space, top of mind concern is always slip-resistance. Here in Canada, we use the ANSI standard Dynamic Coefficient of Friction test (Commonly DCOF) to test for slip resistance. Always dry and level floors don’t have any recommended minimum, 0.42 is the magic number for potentially wet and level areas, 0.60 for exteriors and frequently wet and 0.65 for ramps. We always note DCOF for all our collections and make testing data available on request.
Large-Format Tiles
Commercial spaces are often on a larger scale than we see in residences. To take full advantage of the broad expanses, opting for larger formats is often preferable. Our flagship size that is almost always offered in our collections is 24x48” but we even carry 36x36” and 48x48” too. These huge panels are perfectly suited to commercial scale contribute to an elevated, luxury feel simply by their grand format.
Porcelain Tiles
Made from fine kaolin clays with minerals like feldspar and quartz, porcelain is a very durable and strong form of tile. By definition porcelain (or impervious category) is a ceramic tile with 0.5% porosity or less. Most of our collections are 0.1% or less. Porcelains are inherently highly resistant to frost or moisture making it a great choice for doorways, lobbies and exteriors. Typically, areas with high traffic, extreme conditions and where instances of wear and tear are likely.
All our collections recommended for floors (with the little foot icon) are porcelain to take the guesswork out of the equation for you.
Ceramic Tiles
Glazed ceramic never goes unnoticed! This particular kind of tile is highly durable for wall cladding in any commercial setting. The higher-porosity body of ceramics makes them easy to adhere and opens up a wider range of glazes and frits (the glass-based surface finish). This ensures impeccable surfaces for areas commonly touched and at eye-level. Even in commercial spaces, ceramic wall tile should not be overlooked as a finish option.
Our Dynamic Collection combines inkjet technology with exquisite craftsmanship to form a beautiful marriage of an artisanal look with modern performance and costs.
Inherently, ceramics offer stain resistance, fire resistance, easy maintenance, and do not harbor odors making it an ideal surface material for wall areas in shops and restaurants.
Gauged Porcelain Panels and Slabs
Soon to be in stock! We’re bringing in a premium Italian Gauged Porcelain program to Vancouver. Gauge is just another word for thickness, and this performance material is offered (and stocked) in 3 thicknesses for specific uses. Each have been precision designed to meet the needs of specific use-cases. 3’x8’ and 5’x11’ in 6mm for walls and floors (and creative applications like cabinetry and furniture veneers). The 5’x11’ format in 12 and 20mm thicknesses are specifically for worktops, counters and other structural settings.
2cm Porcelain Pavers
Our 2-CM-E program of porcelain pavers is the ideal solution if (like most businesses these days) you need to expand your viable space into the exterior environment and want performance and aesthetic continuity. The 2cm format allows for mortarless installation in exteriors, reducing cost of exterior hardscaping and allowing for a continued design language. Our supplier, the top producer of the segment in Spain, offers large formats in 24x48” and 12x48” to pair with the rest of our iconic collection.
Find a Tile That Works for You
Turn to Centanni Tile - A Trusted Tile Shop in Burnaby BC
At Centanni Tile we love creating conversations through our timeless flooring and cladding options. Contact us today to discover your dream tile.
info@centannitile.com
Tel: 604.298.1531