Fioranese Cementine Black&White Patterned Porcelain Tiles

Cementine Black&White by Fioranese, designed by Silvia Stanzani — the encaustic cement tile stripped of its colour. The original cementine of the early 1900s were poured in pigment and laid in busy polychrome floors; this collection keeps their geometry and drops everything but black and white, which turns a period decorative tile into something that reads as contemporary graphic design.

Twelve patterns were drawn for the collection. All twelve appear in the Mix, supplied assorted, and five of them are also sold individually so you can run a single motif rather than a patchwork. That choice is the whole decision with this tile, and it produces two completely different floors.

Mix or single pattern

Mix gives you all twelve motifs boxed together and laid at random. It is the way the collection was conceived and it reads as a genuine reclaimed floor — busy, but held together by the fact that everything is black and white. Fioranese do not guarantee a minimum number of each pattern per box, and the shade rating is V4, so no two areas will be alike.

Black&White_1 through _5 are single motifs, rated V2. A single pattern is the quieter choice and much easier to work with in a small room — it also lets you set a border, a band or a chequer against a plain tile. Several of the five are near-symmetrical, so they build a larger secondary pattern across four tiles depending on how you rotate them; the laid-out composition shots in the gallery show what each one does.

Specification

• Material: Porcelain stoneware, body-coloured (EN 14411:2012 Annex G Group BIa GL)
• Thickness: 10mm
• Shade variation: V2 on the single patterns; V4 on the Mix
• Finish: Naturale Rettificato (matt rectified)
• Size: 20x20cm
• Packaging: 27 pieces (1.08m²) per box, 68 boxes per pallet
• Slip & wear: R9, PEI 4, DCOF wet 0.60, BCRA dry and wet > 0.40
• Application: Floors and walls, indoors and out. Rated for residential, light and heavy traffic, swimming pool surrounds, and external cladding and ventilated facades
• Sustainability: high recycled content, made partly from reclaimed water and production waste. Made in Italy

More versatile than it looks

A decorative 20x20 usually means an indoor feature tile. This one is rated for a good deal more: heavy traffic, outdoor use, pool surrounds and ventilated facades, with a DCOF of 0.60 wet, which is well above the 0.42 threshold and unusually high for a decorated surface. In practice that means it will take a hallway or a small commercial floor rather than only a cloakroom, and it can carry from an indoor floor out onto a terrace.

Laying a 20x20 pattern tile

Set out from the centre of the room, not from a wall — with a geometric repeat, a cut border of unequal width at opposite ends is the thing that spoils it. Dry-lay a square metre first, particularly with the Mix, and spread the denser motifs rather than letting them cluster. A narrow 2–3mm joint and a mid-grey grout usually works better than white or black, both of which fight the pattern.

Ordering & delivery

• Minimum order: 5m²
• Sold by: the m², supplied in full boxes of 1.08m²
• Prices: inclusive of VAT
• Full pallet: reduced rate applied automatically
• Delivery: 4–6 weeks, ordered from Italy. Delivery is charged after purchase, calculated on the weight of your order — we will confirm the cost with you before despatch
• Allow 10% over your measured area for cuts and future repairs, more if you are setting out a border or a diagonal

See it before you buy

Pattern tiles are the ones people most often regret ordering from a screen, because scale is impossible to judge from a thumbnail — a motif that looks delicate in a 200-pixel square can be assertive across a whole floor. It is also hard to picture what the Mix actually does until you see twelve patterns together. Samples of the Mix and all five single patterns are available to order, and the range is on display at our luxury interiors showroom in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, where you can lay a few out and rotate them. Our team can help with setting out, quantities and grout selection. Call 01782 617517 or email sales@homeofclay.co.uk for a quotation or to arrange a visit.