Interior and finishes

Tiles & Stone Surfaces

Tile and stone are surfacing systems: the tile, the adhesive, the substrate, the movement provision and the grout all have to suit each other and the room. A tile that performs perfectly on a stable, dry floor can fail on a flexing timber base or in a shower that was never tanked.

These entries describe the surfacing materials themselves and the questions that follow them. They contain no slip determinations, no wet-area waterproofing specification and no claim that a given tile or stone is suitable for a given room — that is a decision about the whole assembly.

37 reference entries · educational materials reference · suitability always depends on the complete assembly and qualified professional review

Scope

What this category covers

Where the boundary of this part of the library sits, including what it deliberately leaves to qualified professionals.

Fired tile, natural stone and engineered stone surfacing
Mosaic and small-format tiling
Backer boards, adhesives and grouts that tiling depends on
Not covered: slip ratings, wet-area waterproofing design or suitability determinations

Start here

Frequently referenced entries

A starting point, not a ranking — these are simply the entries most people arrive looking for.

Porcelain tile →A fired clay tile pressed from a fine body at high temperature, generally far less absorbent than ordinary ceramic, and used on floors, walls and external surfaces.Engineered quartz →A composite of crushed quartz bound in polymer resin and pressed into slabs, giving a consistent factory-made surface that behaves unlike stone around heat and sunlight.Tile adhesive and grout →The bedding and jointing materials that hold tiling in place and fill between the units; grout fills and colours joints, but it is not a layer that keeps water out.

All entries

Every tiles & stone entry

The complete set for this category, in reference order.

Entry describes

Role in an assembly

Part of a building

Porcelain tile →A fired clay tile pressed from a fine body at high temperature, generally far less absorbent than ordinary ceramic, and used on floors, walls and external surfaces.

Ceramic tile →A glazed fired clay tile with a more open body than porcelain, long used on internal walls and lighter-duty floors, and easier to cut and drill on site.

Natural stone tile →Quarried stone sawn into tiles and slabs for floors, walls and terraces, where the geology of the particular stone rather than a factory recipe governs how it behaves.

Granite →A hard igneous stone of interlocking crystals, quarried as slabs and tiles for worktops, floors and external surfaces, and generally tolerant of the acids that etch carbonate stones.

Marble →A recrystallised carbonate stone with characteristic veining, softer than granite and chemically reactive to acids, which is why it behaves as it does in kitchens and bathrooms.

Limestone →A sedimentary carbonate stone formed from shell and lime sediment, softer and often more open than marble, with travertine as a characteristically voided variety of it.

Terracotta tile →Unglazed fired clay tile with an open body and warm earth colours, traditionally given a surface treatment after laying and developing a patina through years of use.

Mosaic tile →Small tile units supplied on a backing sheet, where the quantity of joints, the mounting method and the way sheets meet matter more than the material the pieces are made from.

Engineered quartz →A composite of crushed quartz bound in polymer resin and pressed into slabs, giving a consistent factory-made surface that behaves unlike stone around heat and sunlight.

Sintered stone →A slab of mineral powders compacted under pressure and fired without any polymer binder, closely related to porcelain and quite distinct from resin-bound quartz composites.

Tile backer board →A board fixed to walls and floors to give tiling a flat, stable and moisture-tolerant base; it is a substrate rather than a finish, and is not by itself a water-managing layer.

Tile adhesive and grout →The bedding and jointing materials that hold tiling in place and fill between the units; grout fills and colours joints, but it is not a layer that keeps water out.

Sandstone →A sedimentary stone of cemented quartz grains used for paving, walling and flooring, where the bed direction, cement type and pore structure govern behaviour.

Slate Dimension Stone →Metamorphic slate supplied as thicker slabs for floors, cills, hearths and worktops, where cleavage direction and surface finish drive the decisions, not roof fixing.

Basalt →A fine grained volcanic stone used for paving, flooring and cladding, whose even dark tone, vesicular pores and honing behaviour set it apart from coarse granite.

Quartzite →A quarried metamorphic rock of recrystallised quartz, routinely confused with resin bound engineered quartz and frequently mislabelled in the slab trade.

Soapstone →A soft, talc rich metamorphic stone with very little open porosity, so it marks easily, while the talc and chlorite that dominate it do not etch as the calcite in marble and limestone does.

Onyx Stone →A banded, translucent carbonate stone precipitated from mineral water, used mainly for backlit panels and normally resin filled, mesh backed or laminated to survive handling.

Flint Walling →Walling built from flint, a hard nodular silica won from chalk country, bedded in deep lime mortar and normally framed by brick or worked stone dressings.

Cast Stone →A manufactured concrete product made with selected stone aggregates and a fine facing mix, cast and finished to resemble dressed natural stone in cills, copings and surrounds.

Dry Stone Walling →Mortar-free stone construction in which sorted stone is laid so that the work holds together through bedding, batter, hearting, through stones and the waller's skill.

Stone Setts →Small, deep paving units cut or split from hard stone and laid as masonry into a bedding layer, rather than bonded to a substrate as thin calibrated slabs are.

Stone Kerb and Edging →Linear stone units worked to a consistent section and set along the edge of paved areas to define edges, form channels and mark changes of level.

Stone Copings and Cills →Shaped stone units that cap a wall or sit beneath an opening, worked with falls and drip grooves so that water is carried across them and released clear of the wall below.

Clay Paving Brick →Clay paving brick is a fired clay unit laid as an external wearing surface, and it is not the same product as a facing brick made for walling.

Encaustic Cement Tile →An encaustic cement tile is a pigmented cement unit pressed and cured rather than fired, which is what drives its sealing, grouting and cleaning questions.

Handmade Glazed Tile →Handmade glazed clay tile is formed and glazed by hand, so that size, thickness, flatness and glaze all vary from one unit to the next.

Glass Tile →Glass tile is a unit defined by its translucent, non-absorbent glass body rather than by its size or by the sheet it arrives mounted on.

Agglomerated Marble →Agglomerated marble is a slab of crushed marble bound in resin, and its carbonate aggregate sets it apart from an engineered quartz slab of similar appearance.

Solid Surface →Mineral-filled solid surface is a cast acrylic or polyester sheet, bonded so that joins become inconspicuous and, in its acrylic form, shaped by thermoforming.

Uncoupling Membrane →A tile uncoupling membrane is the thin layer set between substrate and tile so that the two can move independently inside a tiling system.

Tile Edge Trim →Tile edge trim profiles are the bedded metal or plastic beads that finish an exposed tile edge and define a corner within a tiled surface.

Paving Pedestals →Adjustable paving pedestals carry slabs on point supports above an open void instead of on a continuous mortar or granular bed.

Paving Bedding Mortar →Bedding and jointing materials sit under and between external paving units, and they differ both from interior tile adhesive and from walling mortar.

Wet Room Former →Wet room floor formers are pre-graded decks that build falls towards a drain inside the floor construction, before waterproofing and tiling go over them.

Stone Impregnator →An impregnating sealer for stone and tile is absorbed into the pore structure and leaves no film sitting on the surface of the material.

Tactile paving unit →A paving unit defined by the raised profile moulded, drilled or bonded onto its face, where the profile and its contrast with the surrounding surface are the product rather than the body.

Browse by role

By the role the material plays

The same entries, clustered by what they typically do in an assembly. A material can appear in more than one cluster because it genuinely plays more than one role.

Substrate and base

Backgrounds and bases that other materials are fixed or applied to.

Weather barrier

Layers that shed or resist rain, wind and weather.

Stone Copings and Cills →

External surface

The visible outer face of a wall or roof.

Internal surface

The visible inner face people see, touch and walk on.

Jointing and fixing

Materials that bond, seal, support or connect other materials.

Where they appear

Parts of a building this category touches

An orientation aid only — it does not imply that any entry is suitable for that part of a particular building.

External walls · 6
Roofs · 1
Internal walls and ceilings · 23
Floors · 22
Wet areas · 13
External works and landscape · 19

Elsewhere on Build Design Hub

Planning guidance for this subject

This library explains what materials are. These sections help with choosing between them and preparing for the conversation.

Bathroom materials guides →Planning guidance for wet-room surfaces and tiling.Kitchen materials guides →Planning guidance for worktops and splashbacks.Material and finish decisions →Preparation before a surfaces conversation.

Building Systems Encyclopedia

The assemblies these materials sit in

A material page explains what a substance is. These pages explain how the assembly around it is organised, what roles its components perform and which interfaces matter.

Water and external systemsDecks, Paving and Hard Landscape Systems →External surfaces people stand on, plus the substructure, edge, support and guarding that make one usable, each decided by the layer beneath and the route its water takes.Interior assembliesInternal Partitions, Linings, Ceilings and Wet Areas →Internal elements whose behaviour comes from the framework, the void and the perimeter behind them rather than from the board or tile on the visible face.

Materials & Systems Encyclopedia

Reference entries for building materials, product formats and system components — what they are, what their behaviour depends on and what to ask about them.

Browse the full Materials Library →

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