Thousands of years of history over your head and below your feet.

Ellis Island

Over the centuries, tile has facilitated many things, from creative and artistic expression to commerce and even political rebellion. Find your place in this rich and colorful lineage: What will tile make possible for you?

Each tile carries the DNA of thousands of years of history, connecting any space to a rich cultural heritage.

You just can’t say that about other surfaces.

Throughout history, ceramic tiles have represented that perfect union of art and architecture. The richness of tile adorns our greatest buildings and historical icons. Think back to the most impressive spaces you can recall, whether a grand hotel lobby, the nave of an historic church, or even the lake house of a friend, whose cool and unruffled approach to indoor-outdoor weekending came thanks in equal part to tile surfaces and killer Bloody Marys. At the end of the day, all three share a common trait borne out by the same DNA: Great spaces are made memorable by their tiled surfaces.

The genesis of tile’s long history is difficult to pinpoint, but throughout the annals of civilization, tile periodically flourished as a decorative medium influenced by social, political, and economic forces, as well as by the technology at hand. These days, technology facilitates design options that are both affordable and effectively limitless. The varieties of “thin tile” you’ll see on this site, as well as 3D tiles, metallic tiles, stone-look tiles that mimic minerals long since extinct, and so on from the simple to the sublime – all these varieties are the abundant return on countless hours of research, development, and design, coupled with a love for ceramics in labs and studios around the world.

Just as the secret ingredient that makes tile so technologically superior to other choices can be summarized in one word: people – the men and women who pour so much effort into developing new and more exciting surfaces for your spaces – so too are the people who lay the tile an integral part of tile’s unique heritage. Think about it: A building today – any building – is one of the few things still made entirely by “hand,” and every aspect of a tile installation relies on the craftsmanship of the installer. Additionally, the fact that each piece of tile is lovingly hand-laid gives you an additional level of customization to your design that’s simply impossible with other surfaces.

Simply put, in all these ways and many others, tile performs the everyday alchemy of changing any space into your space.

That’s Why Tile®.

Tile Buying Guide

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