We are getting ready to celebrate America’s independence, and Design Diva is talking in Italian. What is going on here? Well, America is known as a melting pot after all. And the first piestrella (tile) didn’t come from the good old USA, tile making was discovered in ancient Babylon about 4,000 B.C. Tiles as we know them appear in temples and homes of ancient Greece and Rome, so the Italian is my round about way to start telling you all about the cool things designers are doing with modern tile!
As we all know, tile is hot! Hot! Hot! Tile flooring, tile backsplashes, tile shower stalls, tile tub surrounds, and even tile accent walls! Tile is like kudzu, everywhere. Except you want it to be part of your backyard living space.
City Tile has been transforming houses all over Middle Tennessee with creative tile installations. Subway tiles are still huge, but now they are offering more colors and sizes. While white and gray have been winning most of the races, blue is moving toward the winner’s circle. Gracefully, like an Italian greyhound (see how the Italian keeps working into the mix).
Don’t think that plain old subway tile is a snooze. Designers are using them to create all kinds of patterns – herringbone, vertical stacks, offset, crosshatch, running road, and diagonal herringbone.
Then there are all of the tile patterns. The latest technology allows tile makers to create faux tile everything from wood to concrete to marble to natural stone. One pattern that has been showing up a lot recently is bamboo. It looks great in bathrooms and blends well with the equal craze with wood flooring.
Just to make sure I cover all of the points in the title of my piece, they also make rovente (burning hot) red tile. If you want to make your kitchen cabinets pop, here is a tile idea for you from modwalls.com.
So, before you light that first firecracker, make sure to celebrate America’s birthday with a trip to City Tile to purchase your gift to yourself in her honor – new tile! After all, birthdays do mean presents. Right?
Bouno Compleanno (Happy Birthday), America!
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