Porcelain Tiles in Mississauga & Barrie | Floor & Wall

Kitchen floors, mudrooms, front entries, bathroom floors and shower walls are the everyday jobs. Porcelain also carries commercial traffic: restaurant floors, lobbies, retail aisles and condo corridors are usually porcelain because it does not wear a path the way softer tile can. Frost-rated porcelain pavers in 2 cm thickness go on patios, walkways and pool decks and shrug off freeze-thaw cycles that crack lesser tile.

The decision line: if the tile is going on a floor, in a shower, or outside, start with porcelain. If it is a dry wall or a backsplash, ceramic may do the same job for less effort, and our porcelain vs ceramic guide walks through the difference room by room.

• PEI rating: the wear class for glazed tile. PEI 3 covers most residential floors, PEI 4 handles entries and busy kitchens, PEI 5 is the commercial grade. Wall-only tile is PEI 1 or 2 and should stay on walls.
• Slip resistance (DCOF): wet floors, shower floors and exterior tile should carry a DCOF of 0.42 or higher. Polished porcelain is beautiful on a wall or a dry hallway and the wrong choice for a shower floor.
• Rectified edges: ground square after firing so every tile is the same size. This is what allows the tight 1/16 to 1/8 inch grout joints people want on large format. Non-rectified tile needs a wider joint to hide the size variation.
• Through-body vs glazed: through-body (colour-body) porcelain carries the colour all the way through, so a chip barely shows. Glazed porcelain has a printed face over a neutral body; the visuals are more varied, and chips show lighter.
• Frost rating: only frost-rated tile goes outside. Indoor porcelain on a Barrie front step will not survive a winter.

Wood-look porcelain planks, usually 6x36 or 8x48, are the answer for anyone who wants a wood floor in a bathroom, a basement or a dog-heavy mudroom. They are the "hardwood tile" people search for, and the better lines have enough face variation that the repeat is hard to spot. Large format 24x48 and 12x24 make a small bathroom or condo kitchen read bigger because there are fewer grout lines. Marble-look porcelain gives the Calacatta and Carrara look without the sealing and etching that real marble asks for, and grey and brown are the two colours asked for most, in both stone and concrete looks. Large-format 24x48 porcelain is shown full size at both stores because a 4-inch sample card cannot tell you how a slab-sized tile reads in a room. Classic 24x24 and 12x12 still carry a lot of commercial and rental work because they are quick to lay and easy to replace.

• Polished or high-gloss finishes on shower floors, pool decks or exterior steps: too slippery when wet.
• Standard 1 cm indoor tile on an exterior patio: use frost-rated 2 cm pavers instead.
• Large format over a subfloor that is not flat: 24x48 tile will lip at the corners. The subfloor needs to be within 1/8 inch over 10 feet, which is usually a self-leveller job before the tile goes down.
• Thin-set that is not rated for large format: tiles over 15 inches on any side need a large-and-heavy-tile (LHT) mortar and back-buttering, or you get hollow spots and cracked corners.

Porcelain is harder to cut and set than ceramic, which is why a good install matters more here. Our own crews, not subcontractors, set porcelain floors, showers and backsplashes in Mississauga, Barrie, Toronto and the surrounding areas, and the same counter sells the LHT mortar, grout, uncoupling membrane and heated floor membrane your job needs, so nothing is substituted on site. If you are doing it yourself, bring the room dimensions and we will work out the box count including the cut waste.

Both stores keep full porcelain displays, not just sample chips. Compare finishes under daylight, see how a rectified edge sits against a non-rectified one, and take a tile home to check it against your cabinets. Mississauga is at 700 Dundas St E, about 20 minutes from downtown Toronto; Barrie is at 112 Saunders Rd, just off Highway 400. Local pages: tile in Mississauga, tile in Barrie and tile in Toronto. Our installers also cover Vaughan, Markham, Brampton, Oakville, Burlington, Etobicoke, Scarborough and North York; the full list is on the service areas page. Browse every porcelain line in the tile collections directory.