You might have heard the words "ceramic tiles" and "porcelain tiles" and wondered what the exact differences are between the two. Simply speaking, porcelain is a type of ceramic as both these materials are made from clay, water, and other raw items.

However, please keep in mind that porcelain tiles are of higher quality than ceramic tiles. We at Idel Tiles only import and distribute industrial grade A Italian porcelain tiles in Sri Lanka.

The published research by remodelling consultant Wallender (2017) highlights the key differences between ceramic and "ceramic porcelain" tiles:

1. Ceramic tiles are cheaper than porcelain tiles
2. Porcelain tiles are harder, denser, and more long-lasting
3. Porcelain tiles has a lower water absorption rate and are more durable
4. Design quality and textures are of higher quality on porcelain tiles.

You have your own unique personality that no one else can copy and the experts at Idel Tiles try to find out what exactly your unique style is before recommending floor tiles. However, we also believe that when it comes to designing a home, it is important to satisfy all the members of your family, be it children, parents, grandparents, or other loved members living with you.

Before you buy floor tiles for your home, garden, and inner rooms, it will of the utmost level of importance to plan your design style. This will result in an elegant, captivating, and intelligent interior design for your house.

In addition, whether you have lived in Sri Lanka for decades or if you have just arrived in the island, you will definitely love our Italian and international ceramic porcelain floor tiles. Furthermore, whether you reside in the urbanised cities, including Colombo, Negombo, and Kandy, or if you reside in outstation destinations, such as Nuwara Eliya, Kurunegala, and Puttalam, you should consider ensuring the home floor tiles you buy to match the surrounding Sri Lankan ambience.

Christo, the Founder and Managing Director of Idel Tiles, has the interesting habit of asking each Client the question “What do you really want your floor to show your house visitors?” Most of our Clients answer with a number of various responses, including the following popular responses:

1. “I want to impress all of my friends and guests”
2. “I want to show our visitors my style”
3. “I just want to create a loving and happy family setting”.

Whatever you actually desire in your heart, the floor tile collections and design styles available at any time at Idel Tiles will allow you to select the floor tile style that matches your inner desire.

If you need to impress house visitors, we recommend our Eye Catcher or Magnetic marble floor tile design collection. In case you need to showcase your own unique style to those who visit your home, then we recommend mixing our Energizer and Eye Catcher floor tile design collections. For creating a homely, warm, and happy ambience, we suggest taking a look at our Cloudy floor tile design collection.

Christo, the Founder and Managing Director of Idel Tiles, has the interesting habit of asking each Client the question “What do you really want your floor to show your house visitors?” Most of our Clients answer with a number of various responses, including the following popular responses:

1. Water-resistant and able to handle weather damages”
2. Beautiful surface and less easy to be stained”
3. Easy to clean any dust
4. Hard, durable, and lasts for a long period of time.

Michelle Nelson (2017) of BYHY University has expressed her views that if you reside in warmer climates, including Sri Lanka, tile floors are the go-to choice. According to Michelle, tile floors keep your home or office cooler in hot weather and this will pave the way for a more comfortable environment for you and your loved ones.

Simona Ganea (2017) has recently published an article that advices home and company decorators to make the floor a focal point in any room, especially in your dining or conference spaces.

In addition, Floor Critics (2018), a group of writers within the flooring industry, has stressed the importance of ensuring the selection of porcelain tiles for your floors as the latest floor tiles were manufactured using modernized technology. As a result, newer porcelain tiles (for example, Italian-made porcelain tiles) comprise higher standards of quality, including more stain-resistant, highly textured, and long-lasting.

It is of the utmost importance to ensure that your entire home and interior design is future-proof. Now, what exactly does this mean when it comes to selecting floor tiles? According to industry experts who have worked with our team at Idel Tiles, you should always select floor tile designs and styles that not only appeal to us today but will also be attractive to you in another 10 or 20 years.

In order to face the above challenge, some of our clients prefer changing or replacing floor tiles after many years and we at Idel Tiles will conveniently support your tile design changes and replacements according to your requirements. In addition, when you visit our office premises in Sri Lanka, we will guide you on how to best change your tile designs for each room floor of your home.

Furniture, the paint on your walls, the lighting ambience, and many other factors come in to play when you select floor tiles that best illustrate the elegance of your style and that of your home. The main components that make up your residence and inner rooms with regard to tiles and interior designing can be classified as follows:

1. Wall, floor, wallpapers, and paint
2. Furniture, equipment, and props
3. Miscellaneous factors, including lighting.

What if you have not yet picked out your furniture? If this is the case, our designers advise that the general style and ambience you wish to create should be considered before purchasing your floor tiles.

If your furniture is strictly or largely wooden, including chairs, tables, kitchen counters, cupboards, and beds made out of mahogany, oak, teak, or other wooden materials, Idel Tiles recommend taking a look at our massive collection of wooden effect grade A floor tiles. These tiles are produced from the finest ceramic porcelain available in the mountainous regions of North and Central Italy. Idel Tiles provides free delivery of all types of wood-look floor and wall tiles, including shades of brown, sand, white, maroon, silver, grey, black, and other colour tones of wood.

On the other hand, if you have elegant and luxurious sofas, chandeliers, glass cabinets, and other modern-day furniture, we at Idel Tiles suggest selecting marble floor tiles, including the matte and glossy tile surface models. If you prefer something less opulent, then our granite, cement or stone effect floor tiles from Casalgrande Padana or other Italian designers will be the perfect choice for your home and inner rooms, including your hall, bedroom, study room, television room, kitchen, balcony, as well as residential outdoor spaces.

If you want to test the actual quality of a floor or wall tile, you could ask for and see the product test results, ISO or international quality certificates, technical specifications or details, and other related publications from the tile shop or company. We at Idel Tiles work with multiple Italian and global partners that have tested our tiles in Germany and other European nations with ISO quality standards.

If you implement at least a few of the following easy tile quality testing methods, you can be able to easily test for yourself the real quality of the tile:

1. Always ask and buy “ceramic porcelain” tiles if you want strong long-lasting tiles
2. Try and hold the tile in your hands to check its weight – if the tile is heavy and strong, then the tile is of higher quality
3. Feel the surface texture and design patterns on the tile – if it is tough and artistically designed, then the tile is almost always of premium quality
4. he best floor, wall, bath, and outdoor tiles in the world are designed in Italy and therefore it will be an advantage to buy Italian tiles (e.g. Casalgrande Padana tiles).

Sri Lanka is home to a number of tile companies, including tile manufacturers, importers, and retailers. However, not all tiles in Sri Lanka are grade A quality! Some floor tiles in Colombo, Negombo, Wennappuwa, Kandy, Gampaha, Puttalam, and other cities of Sri Lanka are made from low quality ceramic materials.

Therefore, you should be careful when you are selecting and buying floor and wall tiles for your house, office, shop, factory, or hotel. It is with the reason in mind that Idel Tiles Sri Lanka has decided to publish ways to check tile quality that are easy for any customer.

Selecting and buying tiles for your home, office, or shop is one thing but transporting it to your doorstep is another issue. This is the reason that Idel Tiles Sri Lanka has an island wide tile, taps, and bathware distribution and logistics solution to support customers wherever they may reside.

Contact Idel Tiles via phone (+94 777 176 169 hotline direct to our Founder) or email ideltile@gmail.com to select, buy, replace, and transport Italian designed ceramic porcelain floor and wall tiles.

Always remember to highlight your favourite furniture, paintings, curtains, or other items as well by using the proper tiles in your home, office, shop, and factory rooms. You may have noticed that interior designers advise to use light coloured or white and off-white floor plus wall tiles for some areas of the building while silver or darker tiles for other areas. This is because each area of any room or place is different and has to show its own personality or style.

Foreign tile consultant firm Europica (2014) has stressed the importance of the colour of floor and wall tiles. According to their flooring design experts, tiles can be used to achieve the following in your home or business lobby, kitchen, bath, bedroom, and other places:

1. Create a feeling for you and your loved ones
2. Make the room space look larger
3. Allow visitors to relax and be cheerful
4. Let your furniture, curtains, and other items be highlighted.

If you wish to have an energetic mood in your room or office, then select a mixture of dark and light shades of tiles. For example, white and grey or black marble Italian tiles from Idel Tiles Sri Lanka will be a perfect choice.

On the other hand, if you want to make your room, shop, office, or any other space appear to be larger or wider, then light coloured floor tiles, including white or light silver marble, stone, cement, or wood-looking ceramic porcelain tiles are suitable for this purpose.

However, if you want to make your living room, bedroom, or a company area appear to be intimate and feel closer together, interior design professionals recommend using darker colours of floor tiles. For instance, the following high quality tiles will be your number one choice in Sri Lanka: black marble, grey cement tiles, cool grey industrial tiles, dark brown wood, grey wood, reddish-brown terracotta, and dark silver metal or fabric.

It is true that many Sri Lankan luxury houses, business company premises, including hotels and cafés, use marble tiles for their floor and walls because of the following reasons:

1. Marble tiles ooze out a royal and luxurious appearance
2. Marble tiles catch the eyes of customers and visitors
3. Marble tiles are a popular trendy choice in Colombo and other areas.

Wood is something that is all around us and a key piece of mother nature. However, this is not the only reason why the recent fashionable trend of installing wood-effect floor and wall tiles in Sri Lankan homes, offices, and factories began. Researchers at Idel Tiles have uncovered a few more reasons:

1. The wooden texture technology has developed since 2016 and is now more realistic
2. A peaceful feeling can be kindled in a person’s heart when wood is seen
3. Wood-effect tiles marry the outside natural world with a house or company building.

Wood is something that is all around us and a key piece of mother nature. However, this is not the only reason why the recent fashionable trend of installing wood-effect floor and wall tiles in Sri Lankan homes, offices, and factories began. Researchers at Idel Tiles have uncovered a few more reasons:

1. The wooden texture technology has developed since 2016 and is now more realistic
2. A peaceful feeling can be kindled in a person’s heart when wood is seen
3. Wood-effect tiles marry the outside natural world with a house or company building.

Development is rampantly progressing in many cities of Sri Lanka and the tile industry is required to help fuel this growth. Ceramic floor and wall tiling is a crucial aspect to not only largescale commercial buildings but to both complex housing, modern apartments, and traditional residences.

Tiles are now imported to Sri Lanka not only from trusted sources but the Founder of Idel Tiles has worked from the start with the vision to always sell industrial grade A quality tiles made in Italy by the best Italian manufacturers. In addition, we only import and distribute tiles that are made from the finest ceramic porcelain.

While our research team has attempted to identify which tile company or tile store of Sri Lanka is the best, this is not an easy task as many factors come in to play - the location, pricing, quality of the tile, reliability and trust with regard to the management and employees of the business.

However, Idel Tiles has an island wide tile transport network and is able to provide free or low-cost tile deliveries to Sri Lanka, including the districts of Colombo, Gampaha, Puttalam, Kurunegala, Kalutara, Kandy, Galle, Kegalle, Anuradhapura, Ratnapura, Mannar and more!

Nevertheless, one thing is clear, the ceramic porcelain tiles sold by the company Idel Tiles Sri Lanka is guaranteed by Sri Lankans, the European Union, and even American architects to be at the highest quality level because of the following features:

1. Specially designed tiles for each room and building - hotels, TV room, kitchen and more!
2. Hundreds of colours, textures, and many shapes
3. Numerous types and collections - marble, stone, wood-look, terracotta, fabric, concrete-look, and more!
4. Manufactured from fine ceramic porcelain in Italy
5. Homogenous body (uni-body), which means it is one tough layer
6. Heavy weight, high tile density, and depth
7. Impervious surface and waterproof
8. Fireproof, stain-resistant, and easy to clean
9. Durable, long-lasts and no need to replace even for 30+ years
10. ISO certified and tested in Germany, Italy, and the EU

You may have noticed that your family members, friends, neighbours, and co-workers in Sri Lanka select Italian-made ceramic tiles for their homes, offices, shops, factories, and other buildings. The reason for this is that Italian ceramic products, especially ceramic porcelain tiles, are designed artistically and manufactured according to the highest available international industry standards.

In addition, architects, interior designers, construction project managers, and informed customers know that Italian porcelain floor and wall tiles are homogenous, long-lasting, and can handle voluminous amounts of pressure from hundreds of thousands of footsteps over numerous years.

1. First step involves identifying your target and purpose. For example, do you want to impress your family members, visitors, or customers?
If you are a company, store, hotel, or other business, then higher beauty levels and the ability to bear thousands of footsteps per day should be considered.

2. Take a closer look at the tile and maybe even touch it to feel its material quality and texture.

3. Size of tile and the inclusion of overlay textural decors should be selected.
International tile experts Floor Critics (2018) recently advised clients to take a decision on the specific size of the tile you want.