Porcelain versus ceramic
Both are fired clay. The difference that matters is density, and it is measurable rather than a matter of marketing: porcelain is defined by a very low water absorption rate, which is what makes it denser, harder, less porous and considerably more durable than standard ceramic. Everything else follows from that one property.
Porcelain suits
- Floors carrying real traffic — entries, corridors, commercial space
- Wet areas and shower floors
- Exterior and unheated spaces, where freeze-thaw punishes porous material
- Large formats, where strength across the span matters
- Anywhere a chipped edge would show — through-body porcelain hides damage that a glazed body would reveal
Ceramic is the better choice for
- Walls, backsplashes and tub surrounds
- Light-traffic residential floors on a controlled budget
- Intricate cutting, where a softer body saves real labour
- Decorative and handmade finishes porcelain simply cannot reproduce
Two secondary specifications are worth reading before ordering. Abrasion resistance ratings tell you whether a glazed tile belongs on a floor at all and at what traffic level — a wall-rated glaze on a corridor floor will look worn within a year. And for any floor that may get wet, the slip-resistance figure matters more than the finish name; a beautiful polished porcelain is the wrong product for a shower floor regardless of what the sample looked like in the showroom.
The cost conversation usually resolves itself once labour enters it. Porcelain costs more per unit and cuts more slowly, but on a floor that will be walked on for twenty years the material difference is small next to the cost of doing the work twice.
Large-format tile has gone from a design choice to a default across GTA suites and commercial interiors, and for good reason: fewer grout lines read as a calmer, larger, more finished space. What comes with it is far less tolerance for anything imperfect underneath.
A large tile cannot bend to follow a floor. A small one effectively can. That single fact drives every requirement:
01
The substrate has to be flat, to a tighter tolerance than standard tile. Industry guidance tightens the allowable variation specifically once tile edges get long, and meeting it usually means self-levelling compound or patching rather than hoping. Flatness is not the same thing as level — a sloped floor can be perfectly flat, and flatness is the one tile actually cares about.
02
The mortar has to be rated for large and heavy tile. Standard thinset is not formulated to hold the required bed depth without slumping under the weight of a big tile. A mortar rated for large and heavy tile is a different product, not a thicker application of the same one.
03
Coverage has to be verified, not assumed. Back-buttering plus a directional trowel pattern, and pulling a tile early in the day to confirm actual mortar contact on the back. Voids under a large tile are where cracks and hollow spots begin.
04
The offset has to be limited. A traditional half-brick pattern is the single most common cause of lippage in long tiles, because the middle of one tile meets the end of its neighbour at the point where any crown in the tile is greatest. Industry guidance caps the offset at roughly a third rather than a half — and if a designer insists on a half offset, that decision needs to be made with the lippage risk stated in writing, before installation.
Check the tile before the floor
Large tiles are permitted a degree of warpage, and a slight crown along the length is normal rather than defective. Lay several loose from the actual delivered lots before starting, and check them against each other. It is a fifteen-minute exercise that occasionally changes the pattern, the grout joint width, or the decision to accept the lot at all — and every one of those is far cheaper to change before the mortar is out.
Multi-unit suite programs
Tiling one bathroom well is a craft problem. Tiling ninety of them to the same standard is a systems problem, and the failure mode is completely different: not a bad installation, but a slow drift where suite eighty does not match suite four and nobody can say exactly when it changed.
What holds quality steady across a volume program:
- A built and approved mock-up suite. One unit completed first, walked and signed off by the client, then kept as the physical reference. A written specification is interpreted; a finished room is not.
- One documented layout rule per room type. Where the layout starts, which edge takes the cut, how the pattern meets the drain and the door. Left to individual judgment, this varies by installer and the variation is visible once units are compared.
- Single-lot material ordering with the overage bought up front. Shade variation between production lots is real and it is not a defect. Running out at suite seventy and topping up from a new lot is how a program ends up with two floors.
- Consistent crews. Rotating unfamiliar installers through a repetitive program guarantees drift. The same crew doing the same detail improves at it.
- Inspection at a fixed point in the sequence — the same stage in every suite, not whenever someone happens to walk through.
Occupied and phased buildings add the constraint that decides the schedule: the work has to be sequenced around residents, protection has to go down and come up daily, and the floor has to be walkable when the crew leaves. That is a planning problem more than a tiling one, and it is best solved before the first suite rather than during the tenth.
Substrate prep and grout
Almost every tile failure traces back to one of two things: something moved that the assembly could not accommodate, or the bond was never sound to begin with. Both are decided before the first tile goes down.
Underneath
The substrate has to be structurally adequate, flat, clean, and stable. Deflection matters — a floor that flexes under load will crack tile and grout no matter how well the tile was set, and natural stone tolerates even less movement than ceramic does. Where an existing slab is cracked, an uncoupling or crack-isolation membrane separates the tile from movement below rather than pretending the crack is gone. In wet areas, a bonded waterproofing membrane belongs behind and beneath the tile; tile and grout are not waterproof and were never intended to be the barrier.
Movement
This is the step skipped most often and the one that causes the most expensive failures. Every tile installation needs movement accommodation: a soft joint at the perimeter where the field meets walls and columns, joints over any structural joint below, and field joints at intervals in large areas — with much closer spacing outdoors or anywhere in direct sun, where thermal movement is far greater. These joints get filled with sealant, never with grout. Grouting a movement joint is functionally the same as omitting it, and the tile will eventually tent or crack along that line to make the point.
Grout
Grout is a finish and a filler, not an adhesive and not a waterproofer. The practical decisions are joint width and grout type. Joint width is not purely aesthetic — it has to absorb the actual dimensional variation between tiles, and rectified tile allows a tighter joint precisely because that variation is smaller. Squeezing a tight joint into tile that was not made for it produces a line that visibly wanders.
On grout type, cementitious grout is entirely appropriate for most residential work. High-performance and epoxy grouts earn their extra cost and difficulty where staining, chemical exposure or heavy commercial cleaning are in play — commercial kitchens, entries, high-traffic corridors. And in every case, mortar gets its full cure before grouting; grouting early traps moisture and is a common cause of blotchy, inconsistent colour that no amount of cleaning will even out afterwards.
How FAIME tiles
Tile and flooring is one of the scopes FAIME self-performs with its own crews — ceramic, porcelain, large-format, natural stone, luxury vinyl plank, shower surrounds and backsplashes — across the GTA, and it is priced and warrantied as our own work rather than brokered out.
In practice, most of the value shows up before any tile is set: confirming the substrate is flat enough for the format specified, resolving deflection and cracking, getting waterproofing right in wet areas, and setting out movement joints where they belong instead of where they are least visible. On multi-unit programs we build the mock-up suite first and work to it.
Tile also rarely arrives as an isolated scope. Where it sits inside a bathroom or kitchen renovation, we self-perform the tile, waterproofing, drywall, painting and trim around it under one contract — cabinetry and finishing carpentry excepted. See tile and flooring or kitchen and bath finishes, or book a site visit.
