Hard surfaces involve hard decisions. Choosing new tile — for a floor, a countertop, a backsplash, a wall — can involve literally dozens of decisions. Do you want terra cotta? Stone? Ceramic? Glass? Metal? Leather? Do you want 3x6" or 4 1/2 x4 1/2"? Do you want beveled or straight edge? What color? Do you want a pattern? Bold graphics or an Israeli mosaic? It's enough to send even the savviest shopper running home to curl up on a carpet and vow to swear off hard surfaces for life. Tile expert Ann Sacks says it doesn't have to be that way. With a few simple questions about how you live, Sacks says you can narrow the field down very quickly. Sacks became a tile maven by accident, when she walked into a dress shop and spotted Talavera tiles on the counter for sale as trivets. The terra cotta tiles sparked happy memories of a childhood trip to Mexico, and Sacks went on binge, tiling over every wood floor in her small bungalow, and selling tile from her home. She sold the company bearing her name to Kohler in 1989 and is no longer affiliated with the business, instead focusing on her new tile venture, Design and Direct Source. Founded in early 2007, Design and Direct Source provides unique tile and stone for large commercial projects.
Tile expert Ann Sacks says it doesn’t have to be that way. With a few simple questions about how you live, Sacks says you can narrow the field down very quickly. Sacks became a tile maven by accident, when she walked into a dress shop and spotted Talavera tiles on the counter for sale as trivets. The terra cotta tiles sparked happy memories of a childhood trip to Mexico, and Sacks went on binge, tiling over every wood floor in her small bungalow, and selling tile from her home.
Selecting tile "requires careful consideration because of the initial cost and the complexity of changing it," says Sacks. "But honestly, I think people end up falling in love with a tile and that's why they choose it."
Her tips on choosing tile:
Evaluate your lifestyle. "Ask yourself: ‘How do I like to live?’" says Sacks. Do you have a lovely formal living room and dining room in which you like to entertain? Or is your home full of kids and friends and neighbors and pizza at the last minute?
A more casual lifestyle might steer you toward practical choices such as slate or terra cotta flooring, "particularly more mottled slates, or slates that appear handcrafted," says Sacks. Another good fit: Glazed ceramic floors. "They’re used throughout Italy," says Sacks, "and some of them look very convincingly like nice warm marble or slate. They wear like iron, they clean beautifully because of the glazed surface, and they’re easy to install and to grout, especially in comparison to natural stone. And they’re very affordable."
If your style is more formal, look at limestone or marble. "There's a huge range," says Sacks, "from a more traditional, handcrafted look in limestone that’s tumbled or with a distressed surface to suggest age and wear, to beautiful formal patterns or inlaid borders."
Think about functional realities, too. Porous materials such as terra cotta and limestone are not good choices for countertops or kitchen floors, for example, unless they're properly sealed. Sacks herself once made the mistake of installing white glazed Italian tile for the kitchen floor of her last house. "We had pets and people and cooking and rain, you name it," says Sacks. "It was awful. I hated myself for 10 years. It could work fine for the right family. It could work on the seventeenth floor of a New York apartment." Now she has a rich ochre limestone.
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