I'm asking this for my friend, as her house is nearly at the handover stage but she has no online access.
She is now looking at ordering some indoor floor tiles to tile all downstairs. Upstairs will be carpeted. She has 2 young kids.
Which tiles are better for 600 x 600 tiles? Glazed porcelain or fullbodied vitrified ones?
She is not interested in those high shine tiles at all, more a matt/semi sheen look.
Also colour wise, she tends to like a mocha colour but do you think it will make house too dark - she is tiling approx 150m downstairs or should she look at a lighter colour tile. upstairs the carpet and stairs carpetted too will be a mocha colour too. Walls are a Whisper white, white polyurethane kitchen, caesarstone benchtop. Any advice re colours for floor tiles would be appreciated too.
I personally prefer vitrified tiles any day & they should look good forever. Matt mocha colour sound perfect. With that large an area, plus all that white - i would definitely NOT do a light tile. Unless perhaps there are absolutely no windows in the area (which i doubt). I think your friend's instincts sound spot on.
A word of caution, if I may, for your friend based on my recent and currently on-going experience in selecting tiles.
I chose a porcelain tile (this problem will be the same for ceramic tiles) for my kitchen/dine/hallway from samples at my local branch of a major tile company and took home 4 samples for a better idea. I placed the order and what was delivered was not even remotely close to the sample, one of which I still had.
The retailer pointed to a small sticker on the sample which said
'there may be a variation in shade, texture and size between batches. This sample is indicative of our current stock' His problem was the light marble-type pattern (on a beige background) was completely missing from the tiles delivered. It could have actually been another tile. The manager agreed they were vastly different and lighter in colour.
I chose a different tile and requested samples 'from their current stock' which I received and were OK, and went to place an order/change-over. However the retailer has no way of knowing what batch number the samples came from, as no-one thought to supply/record it at the warehouse. This means that IF I order from this sample I might end up AGAIN with vastly different tiles. Currently more samples are being sent from the warehouse with their batch number so I know when I'm ordering they have it in stock and will be the same size/colour/pattern etc. So the message is take note of batch numbers OR deal direct with the warehouse. If this isn't resolved soon I could have a serious drinking problem LOL.
I chose porcelain tiles because I think (and correct me if I'm wrong) they have a higher wear rating 4 & 5 out of 5 than ceramic which is usually 3 out of 5. Why not Google 'tile wear ratings' or porcelain and see? I think porcelain are made from a finer material and baked at much higher temperature which makes them so hard, hard to cut, and as a rule tilers charge more for laying them. There are other differences but I wont waffle here.
Good luck