Ceramic Tile: How Is It Made?

When it comes to beauty, durability, and resistance to moisture, ceramic tile flooring is hard to beat. You’ve probably been walking on this ancient flooring solution your whole life, yet, if you’re like most of us, you have only a vague idea how it’s made.

As the purveyor of ceramic tile Portland has come to rely on, Portland Direct Tile & Marble presents this quick primer on ceramic tile manufacturing:

Like all ceramic products, tile begins in the earth as clay and minerals like feldspar and quartz. Ceramics professionals combine these ingredients in a mill to produce a mixture called body slip.

The body slip is 30% water, and resembles the wet clay used in pottery. You might imagine that this mush is pressed into tiles and kiln fired, but the ceramic tile flooring process is a little different. Instead of being formed right away, the body slip is dried into a dustlike powder. It’s this powder that is pressed into unglazed, raw tiles called bisques. The body slip’s properties allow it to be dry-pressed into a coherent tile, the way powdered medicines are pressed into pills.

At this point, the bisques are glazed. There are a wide variety of glaze types and many processes for applying them, from spraying to silk screen printing.

The glazed bisque, now called a green tile, is ready to be kiln-fired. Modern kiln are less like ovens than like assembly lines, with the tiles passing under a computer-controlled heat source on a conveyor belt. Once the tile cools, it’s ready to ship.

Now that you know how manufacturers make the ceramic tile Portland homeowners love, why don't you take a look at a few of the many varieties Portland Direct has to offer by browsing our online catalog or coming and visiting us at our showroom? We'd love to see you!