Florida has always been a place where ceramic tile is the most widely used type of floorcovering. Miami remains the port thru which most of the tile imported from throughout the world arrives. That fact along with a abundance of tile installers make ceramic tile a bargain here in Florida.
The trend in floor tile for the last few years has been to bigger and bigger tiles. Today when we see a house with 12"x12" tile on the floor it looks outdated. Newer homes are using 18", 20" and even 24" tiles in more and more areas of the house. Most buyers are tilling all areas except the bedrooms, opting for carpet there, but some are tilling the entire house. The buzzword in tile these days is porcelain. Dealers are advertising it and buyers are wanting it, but most of them don't know what it is. They only know that it's supposed to be better and for the most part it is. In the past when we used to talk about porcelain tile we talked of a tile where the color went all the way thru the product. It was an expensive tile used mostly commercially. Today, most tiles that are called porcelains have a white porcelain bisque. This bisque is more dense than the red clay bisque found on most ceramic tiles. This makes them cut cleaner, bond better (when using the proper thinset), and less likely to crack that Ceramic tile.
