No longer limited to foyers, kitchens and bathrooms, ceramic tile now can be found in every room of the house.

"Wherever you walk in the home these days, you are seeing tile," said Jeff Kinkead, store manager of Keen Tile in Peoria, Ill.


"Most people building new homes are using wood or tile for the floor covering. They are easier to maintain than carpet and last much longer."

Rich Murray, owner of Rich Murray Floors & Stone in Bartonville, Ill., agrees.

"People who have allergies prefer the hard surfaces over carpet," Murray said. "And in some of the upscale homes, I've even installed tile on garage floors."

The ceramic tile market 20 years ago was dominated by small mosaics and 4-by-4-inch tiles. Today, tile comes in all varieties of colors, patterns and textures. And they come in such configurations as octagons, hexagons, circles, triangles and rectangles.

"Typically, the average tile 10 years ago was a 4-by-4 square on the wall and an 8-by-8 or 10-by-10 square on the floor," said Cindy Erickson, sale supervisor at Leeway Ceramic Tile in East Peoria.

"Now, a typical wall tile is 8-by-10 or 10-by-16. And they can go as large as 12-by-24 for the wall. And the typical floor tile is now 13-by-13 up to 20-by-20."

It was once thought that you wanted small tiles for a small room, Erickson said. But that is no longer true. Bigger tiles, Erickson said, actually make a small room look larger. One advantage to larger tiles is that there are fewer grout lines, which eliminates the checkerboard effect.

Ceramic tile is now showing up in dining rooms, living rooms, sunrooms, recreation rooms and even bedrooms. In dining rooms, many homeowners are combining tile with borders to create the illusion of carpet. Ceramic tile can be laid to resemble medallions or a variety of geometric designs.

"We put a hot tub in the floor of our bedroom," Erickson said. "Rather than carpet part of the room we tiled the entire room. It looks wonderful and it is so easy to take care of."

Patios and porches are popular spots for tile. But in climates where freezing and thawing are quite common during the winter months, ceramic tile is not practical. Porcelain tile, which is non-porous and denser than ceramic tile, is a better choice for outdoor installation.

"Porcelain is used primarily for outside use or commercial use like in malls or coffee shops," Kinkead said.

Ceramic tile is a natural product consisting of clay and other materials that are hardened through intense heat. Color is fired into a tile's body in the case of unglazed tiles or onto a tile's surface for glazed tiles. Porcelain uses different clays than ceramic tile, Kinkead explained.

"A true porcelain tile has color all the way through it," Kinkead said. "If you chip a porcelain tile, the color is still there. Porcelain tile is much harder than ceramic. It's also more expensive."

Ceramic tile was once primarily a treatment to cover bathroom walls in order to provide some "waterproofing," Murray said.

"It was functional at first," he added. "Now tile is used much more as a decorative component in a home."

An endless array of tile patterns can be designed to dress up walls throughout the home. In some homes, natural stone is being used in place of ceramic tiles, Murray said.

"With natural stone you can customize a variety of different designs like a sunburst in the floor," Murray said. "You can be more creative using natural stone than you can with ceramic tile. But natural stone is more costly in terms of material and labor."

Another ceramic tile trend is to combine various sizes and shades of tile color in order to create patterns on the floor. And for the past few years, the most popular colors in tile continue to be earth tones, according to the sales people.

"Tiles used to be smooth and shiny," Erickson said. "Now there are tiles made to resemble the texture and look of natural stone. In the last five or six years, we have had wavy-edged tiles that are cut to look like natural stone."

Tiles also can be made to resemble metal, too. Tiles with metal overlays have been on the market the past few years.

"They can look like pewter, copper and bronze," Kinkead said. "These tiles aren't meant to be used on the floor. They are decorative -- to be used as accent strips."

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