Dallas—Daltile celebrates National Tile Day, February 23, by highlighting the countless attributes that make tile an outstanding component of residential and commercial design, construction and remodeling.
“Tile enables the creation of unique, personalized, beautiful spaces, and we are committed to maintaining the highest levels of style and design in our Daltile products,” said Laura Grilli, director of product design, Dal-Tile LLC. “The level of cutting-edge technology we employ means that if our designers can envision it, we can almost always create it in tile. This ability keeps our tile at the forefront of interior fashion with no lag time, providing the sizes, shapes, designs, colors and textures that bring the ultimate in style to any residential or commercial space.”
Today’s technology also allows for high levels of realism in those tile designs emulating wood, marble, stone and other materials, Grilli added. “Bottom line: tile is no longer simply a utilitarian building material; it is now a true design element in a space,” she said.
Tile has been the preeminent flooring product for wet areas. Because of its waterproof performance, bacteria resistance, low maintenance, versatile design options and cost effectiveness, tile is by far the best flooring product for wet areas such as bathrooms, kitchens, laundry rooms, mudrooms, entryways, commercial public spaces, patios, pools and other outdoor areas. It’s also suitable for surfaces such as walls, showers, countertops, backsplashes and tub surrounds. While liquid spills can ruin other materials, the surface of tile is unchanged by most liquids, water or moisture.
Daltile takes this capability in wet areas to an even higher level by featuring its proprietary StepWise technology across many of its best-selling products. StepWise technology provides 50% more slip resistance than regular tile—making these Daltile products the ideal flooring choice for safety in bathrooms, kitchens, public spaces and even outdoor areas.
In addition to enhanced safety in wet areas, this slip resistance is also a significant attribute from a home design standpoint. It opens up a whole new world of indoor to outdoor seamless design. “In the past, our industry did not have the technology to offer the same level of design for both indoor and outdoor use,” Grilli said. “With StepWise, Daltile is now able to offer the higher level of design historically found indoors for outdoor use. This enables seamless design from the kitchen to the patio, making the outdoor space an extension of the home. Daltile has taken many of our most popular looks and are now featuring those with StepWise technology.”
Another benefit of tile is it’s hard and impervious, so it’s innately resistant to the growth of bacteria, mold and mildew. Thus, Daltile tile is a hypoallergenic surface and harbors no odor. In addition, Daltile tile is made from natural materials: water, clay, sand, feldspar and other natural minerals. Being made of natural ingredients, the company’s tile surfaces are free from toxic chemicals and harmful contaminants found in other types of flooring (no VOCs, no PVCs, no formaldehyde, no allergens). Regular, basic cleaning with warm water and mild soap is sufficient to keep Daltile porcelain tile looking like new.
Daltile has taken the product’s natural hypo-allergenic and maintenance-free aspects a step further by introducing Daltile’s DEFEND powered by Microban technology in the floor, wall and mosaic tile products under this umbrella. Daltile’s DEFEND powered by Microban products continuously eliminate up to 99% of the bacteria on the tile surface, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Because this technology is baked into the tile, it will not wash off or wear away, for the life of the tile. Daltile’s DEFEND program features some of today’s hottest styles and most on-trend tile designs in this superior performance format.
“At Daltile, we are passionate about creating beautiful tile responsibly, 365 days a year,” said Paij Thorn-Brooks, vice president of marketing, Dal-Tile LLC. “We are proud that tile has the lowest carbon footprint of any installed hard surface flooring.”
Tile boasts many other sustainability attributes:
- Over 99% of our tile collections contain recycled or reclaimed materials.
- On average, our North American facilities recover and reuse more than 300 million pounds of recycled and/or reclaimed material per year.
- 2018 to present Daltile has reduced its carbon footprint by 17%.
- Overall, Daltile recovers and reuses 84% of all process wastewater generated in its manufacturing plants to make tile products.
- Daltile’s measures have prevented over 125 million gallons of wastewater from entering local municipal water treatment facilities.
- Daltile has reduced energy consumption by 11% at all of its company-owned sales service centers and distribution facilities.
- Daltile’s tiles are made from only natural materials: water, clay, sand, feldspar and other minerals. Daltile’s tiles contain zero VOCs, zero PVCs, zero allergens and zero formaldehyde.