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Choosing Between Porcelain and Ceramic Flooring

Author: Lora Davis
by Lora Davis
Posted: Jul 14, 2016

When it comes to new floor installation for new home constructions or even renovation, many people have always used ceramic flooring and porcelain flooring interchangeably; however, you only need to talk with experts from flooring companies and they will show you a host of differences between the two. If you take the time to speak to many salespeople, they may not be able to tell enough reasons to justify the reason why porcelain flooring tiles are more expensive; however, if you got inkling on the manufacturing process for both ceramic flooring tiles and porcelain flooring you will begin to see the differences in their features and performance hence the price differences.

What to choose: If you are thinking about a low stress new floor installation in a place that has limited exposure to humidity, you will benefit greatly from the superior features of porcelain flooring tiles so that in this case it may look like it is similar to ceramic flooring tiles. However, when you need a material that requires the kind of resistance that will not get with ceramic tiles, porcelain flooring comes in handy at such a time.

When you go shopping in preparation for your new floor installation, you will realize that porcelain is basically categorized together with materials that are generally referred to as ceramics. However, that branding should not deceive you into believing that whether you take ceramic or porcelain the difference is the same; nothing could be further from the truth. While they may go under the same umbrella name that is ceramics, porcelain flooring tiles undergo a more elaborate and intensive finishing process during its manufacture to give it a superior edge; they are taken through an intense firing and boiling to make them more resistant to water, moisture and humidity.

Once the stringent process for manufacturing porcelain flooring tiles has been completed, the tiles are undertaken through a strict test to determine the water resistance levels they have achieved depending on the amount of water they absorb during the boiling stage. If a tile absorbs anything that is more than 0.5% of its total weight, it fails the test and is labeled a ceramic flooring tile otherwise it becomes a porcelain flooring tile. Manufacturers will still use another test to determine whether a tile falls under the ceramic or porcelain category based on its purity levels.

Ceramic flooring tiles contain a slightly higher level of impurities and there is very little that can be done to make corrections during the manufacturing process; meanwhile, the clay, quartz and feldspar that are an important ingredient in porcelain flooring tiles allows them to be fired to a whole 1400 degrees Celsius. If you are going to choice between the two, you can now make an informed decision.

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I like writing articles on various topics and hope readers would enjoy reading them.

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Author: Lora Davis
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Lora Davis

Member since: Oct 05, 2015
Published articles: 165

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