Tampa Bay’s Home Design Blog

Posted on June 12, 2019 by Frank John Garcia in Tile

Through-Body Tile vs. Color-Body Tile

Porcelain tile is beautiful and water resistant, making it the perfect choice for Florida homeowners. With the wide variety of colors and styles, the applications are only limited by your imagination. While tiles are distinguished by shape, color, and texture, they are also classified by whether they are full-body or full-color, but what does that mean to you?

Through body refers to the fact that the color, style and design permeates through its entire bisque. There are several advantages of full-body tile, including:

• Because the color goes all of the way through the bisque, chips, scratches or other damage is not noticeable.
• They are available in a wide range of colors, textures and sizes. As with many tiles, they can have the look and feel of stone, wood, terrazzo, metal and concrete.

Color-Body Tile

Color-body is different in that the bisque is dyed in a similar color to the glaze. During manufacturing, a pigment is added to the tile body prior to glazing to ensure that it will match the surface. Although there is a difference between the surface and the body of the tile, the close color match makes it less noticeable if it is chipped or scratched.

The biggest advantage of color-body tile is that it comes in a broader range of designs, which gives you nearly endless choices. It typically costs less than the through-body ceramic tiles, but slightly more than normal bisque tile.

Comparing the Through-Body and Color-Body

There are two primary differences between these two types of tiles:

• The through-body may have no glaze or some glaze but the color-body typically has a glaze, although both have a lovely finish.
• The through-body tiles are the same color and texture throughout while the color-body has a glazed surface and color-matched bisque. Scratches and chips are more noticeable on the color-body tiles, though the matching base minimizes this issue.

Glazed tiles are great for accents and homes, and are a perfect choice when creating a specific look and feel of a room. Both tiles are great options, so select the one that best suits your style and application.

At Gulf Tile we carry both through-body and color-body tiles in a wide variety of colors, sizes and textures. Visit one of our five locations and speak with our designers to help you choose the perfect tile for your home.