Porcelain tiles - Italy v China v UAE

Porcelain tiles from Malaysia ~$70/m2 plus.


(but this is at Beaumont Tiles ... their Malaysian tiles can be more exy than some Italian tiles at Harvey Norman )


So have I

Yes the more expensive it is the better the tile quality, as they use better clays and manufacturing procedures I have seen these many times over and I can tell you it is well worth paying the extra dollars if you can. If your budget is low than go for ceramics they come in larger sizes now and have great designs and a 10 times easier to maintain polished or glazed.

Craig

To be honest, I quite often doubt that the price tag really matches the value - this applies to both labour and materials and is in no way limited to tiles only.

Back to these Malaysian tiles at BT - BT often have sales which can sometimes reduce the price significantly. So, even though the sales are only temporary, we're talking about reducing the price from 75/m2 to 50/m2 ... The real cost is impossible to guess, but a large portion I believe goes on keeping numerous staff members, showroom gadgets and so on.

So, even though their tiles may come from China(?), perhaps the (for example) TFO's price of 20-30/m2 is closer to reality as they are not pricing too many overheads? Does anyone have any experience with TFO's porcelain tiles?

I thought I should share my experience here, not sure whether I've got ripped off...if this thread is ALL true...

I'm a very impatient person, and I went out and bought our tiles way before house is ready.
we haven't even got our slab down, but I loved the tiles and they only had 110sqm2 worth left,so I went out and bought them all.
It was a fairly big tile shop in Perth, and they were having end of final year sales.
It was originally from $60sqm2 and was on sale for $45smq2 but when we bought the whole lot, he did the price of $38/sqm2.
He himself was from Italy (I could easily tell before he even told me) and I expressed my worries to him about tiles being so cheap. It's 600x600 polished porcelain btw.
He started explaining that tiles that states "from Italy" is being manufactured in China, 99% of the time, well he actually corrected himself saying 100% of the time.
He said he has a factory in China where he goes on regular base and pick the tiles he wants and bring them over to Australia.
He knows majority of tile shop in Perth selling the tiles saying made in Italy but they get the tiles from the same place.
He said it's just like everything else, it's all made in china..
It's designed by Italy, and made in China.
Anyway, since I really liked the tiles, I paid the balance in full, they will hold the stock for us til the construction finishes.
I managed to get one piece and I conducted all the tests you guys have gone through.
I've left on soy sauce, coke, vinegar, fish sauce etc etc......over an hour, no stains, nothing.
I laid the tiles near the entrance with sunlight coming, it looked beautiful to me...
I really don't know how they will really look like because it's not laid properly in the new house yet, but so far, I don't see any problem....
I don't know whether I was ripped off by the tricky Italian sales rep, or he was really telling the truth.....

Wow that is very interesting what that tile salesman has said that all tiles are made in China, I will have to disagree with that statement specially coming from a sales rep but if he is right than all tile shops in Australia can be sued as it is in our legislation to protect buyers from false claims.

Craig

I believe there are tiles made in somewhere else rather than China but I think he was trying to stress the fact that majority of tiles are made in China, and not necessarily they're worse or better because it was made in china.
Expensive tiles are also made in china, and that doesn't necessarily mean that they're crap...I guess.
I hope he's right.

My tiles are from Italy. I know since they were shipped from Italy. (Maybe they went from China to Italy to Australia )

One of the other comments that I have come across is the use of shipping wax on tiles and most commonly on those from China. This wax protects the tiles during shipping.

I would suppose any shipping wax needs to be cleaned from the tiles before doing any stain tests.

The shipping was has to be removed before sealing any porcelain tiles.

That is very interesting, since it could be the shipping wax that I was seeing at DiLorenzo and some other places. When I asked about it at one very large tile place, I didn't get any meaningful answer.

Although, according to description on this site, it doesn't make sense and it might not be the wax
http://www.ehow.com/how_7262555_remove-wax-coating-porcelain-tiles.html

Wax is easily removed buy Spirit Marble porcelain creme cleanser you can buy at any CTM tile shop or check spirit marbles website a 500 ml bottle will remove 80 m2 wax easy DIY. The reason is as mentioned above to protect the polish during transit we beleive China put it on there to hide there unseen haze and defects.

In saying that we remove wax for a builders every week and they only buy top quality polished porcelains never from China and they get them for a great price due to bulk purchases.

Craig

GP, can you describe this unseen haze? How does it look like, how big it is on one tile, where on the tile is it located (if this is consistent), when and where can you notice it (eg. only when looking towards large glass areas), etc...
Maybe the shineless border strip that I've seen on tiles is a haze problem?!?

And when you say "other defects", what do you mean exactly? What other problems can there be with tiles?

Yes unseen haze after wax removal has plenty of names cloudy, bloom, not-full gloss, dull, patchy covering all the tile surface, sometimes we see just half the tile looking hazy if only on the edges than kiln reduction flash would cause that.

The problem is that often the tiler or anyone else cannot spot the problem until the tiles are installed, with the wax and building debris cleaned off, and with the right lighting conditions, we recommend dark tint windows to reduce the hazy look. The stores say that if a tile is defective, dont stick it to the floor, and they will refund or replace the faulty tiles.

Other defects can vary some stain that badly that one drop of red cordial can not be removed or some tiles show foot prints, cleaning marks etc these are a real problems for some off our customers.

Craig

Hi all,

I've been following this thread with interest as we have 600x600 matt porcelain tiles.

Regarding the wax coating -- the tile shop we purchased from told me to use Cleaning Vinegar in a 1:1 solution with boiling water. As I had never heard of Cleaning Vinegar I did not take their advice and tried all kinds of other specialist products with no success.

I then tracked down the Cleaning Vinegar (yes...there it was in the cleaning aisle of of the local supermarket) and it worked a treat! It removed the waxy coating *completely*.

For what it's worth (and I won't go into all the details cos it's a Days of Our Lives saga) one thing I would be cautious of that nobody seems to have mentioned regarding *ANY* large format tile from either China, Italy, Upper or Lower Mongolia etc etc is the flatness of the tile.

Some of our tiles have a very slight ripple in them which is obvious in sidelit situations. We've had this investigated via one of Howard Ryan's specialist contacts and I can confirm the following:

- our tiles are not seconds and this is a regular occurance;
- you will not notice this 'problem' in tile showrooms because of their overhead lighting..versus homes where large windows allow natural daylight to flood in at an angle thus highlighting the 'problem';
- the problem is not considered a fault because the Australian Standard, based on the International Standard, is flawed and allows for this since the standard was compiled by the tile manufacturers themselves!
- caveat emptor -- be aware of this and be wary of any sample given to you as chances are it will NOT be a tile with any obvious ripple in it.

Good luck...Pix

I really appreciate the advice you have been providing - its been excellent.

I have warned my wife that tile grip is a double edged sword - you get more grip underfoot but also the same applies to dirt/dust.

Was talking to a tiler and asked about this (Italy vs. China made) - he cheekily said that many are "made in I" but in fact they are made in China

Also noticed some tiles having almost like a glass layer on top. This layer seems like good 1-2 mm thick and you can see it when looking at the tile at an angle and quite short distance. The colour of the tile / the body seems to be laying under this glass looking, thick transparent layer.
Are these lower or higher quality? What is this transparent layer??

I've laid tiles for near on 20 years and can tell you that no one country makes 100% perfect tiles all of the time. We were doing a large commercial job at a shopping centre in perth a few years ago and once the tiles arrived from italy set about laying them. They were so far out of square that we declined laying them because we would not have been able to produce the results that we wanted. We ended up selecting a cheaper Asian import tile and all was good.
You can get size differences that are minimal,some are terrible,some have warp in them etc,etc,etc.
The Aust standards state that you can have 0.5% warp within the surface of a tile along it's length. A 600mm tile then is supposed to be ok with 3mm bow in the centre. As tilers this is some of what we have to contend with.

That is shocking, russ.. ! Maybe those out of square italian tiles were a "feature grade" (like timber flooring) but they didn't tell you ??

So it seems like it's not always what you pay for

Hi All,

I have been reading the resposes here about tiles, and the more expensive the better they are. I whole heartedly disagree!! Who says that price = quality? In many areas this is a common misconception.

I think is very important to shop around, in my travels for quality porcelian tiles I found two excellent places: Tile Factory Outlet and Tiles to Go (just google to find). These places proved that quality over rides price, there are excellent bargins and savings at these two places. Forget Harvey Norman, Domayne or any of the other big wigs, this place has the same products (tiles from Italy- Mona Lisa brand) for a quarter of the price!!

And the staff actually know what they are talking about, they didnt try to force anything on me!! At TFO, I found out there is even an ex-tiler there who is able to give excellent advise.

So forget big price = quality. All it means is big price, because ultimately, they all come from the same place. Renovating is soooo expensive any way, why not save some money and go for true quality rather that huge price.

Brown Short Hair

We are looking to get 600x600 tiles too for the whole house even the bedrooms, and went to the Tile Factory Outlet today.
All I had to say was hmmm.....! We have seen some tiles in HN (polished porcelain rectified tiles - Limestone) which are going for around $40sqm2; they have only just got them in.
Now when we went to the TFO we saw loads of tiles after asking lots of questions on where the tiles are made etc...Most of them are from china.... the limestone one which looks just like the one in HN was from UAE- we could not get a sample for this! we did however get a sample of another tile we liked until....when he picked up the tile and put it back down the corner chipped... he said don’t worry about it, this won’t happen why you have them tiled!
The limestone ones from the UAE they are being sold for around $34 a sqm2.
I asked him about the issue with the haze and I want to try and avoid tiles from china... don’t worry about it mate these tiles are from a good place we don’t stock bad tiles.... hmmmm..Did you not just chip one? Ohh done worry about that it won’t be like that once it’s on the floor....
Well like everyone has said on here what you pay for what you get....
TFO is a no no for me as I think they are cheap imports!

Is this the said wax cleanser? http://spiritsealers.com/product.php?idProduct=4