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melle_sacto_gw

Plain white, glossy tile - large format size - under $3.50 sq/ft

I didn't think I was being THAT picky, but I've been looking for a large format, plain white, shiny wall tile under $3.50/sq ft..and I'm not even fixed on a size is just needs to be around 12 x 12 give or take a few inches...and square vs rectangular doesn't matter...but does it exist?

I found a great flooring solid body tile at Cortopassi -- expensive but our floor is small -- but why would plain shiny white, large format, be either out of our price range or else nonexistent? Our floor is only about 25 sq ft, but the wall space we need to cover is nearly 150 sq ft!

And this at HD -- it's ALMOST white, but not white, and I really don't want to look at the marbling b/c this tile is going all over the bath shower and then on all the walls, and I just think I will be sick of it after a while:

Daltile Marissa Cararra 10 in. x 14 in. Ceramic Wall Tile
$2.21/ sq ft

vs plain shiny white:

Daltile Polaris Gloss White 12 in. x 18 in. Glazed Ceramic Wall Tile
$5.17/ sq ft

Can anyone please direct me to a place that I can find what I'm looking for? Thank you so much!

Comments (9)

  • mdln
    10 years ago

    white tile 1.79 sf

    disclaimer: I do NOT work for floor & decor

    This post was edited by mdln on Sun, Mar 9, 14 at 13:58

  • melle_sacto is hot and dry in CA Zone 9/
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    Thank you for the screen shots! I hadn't come across this shop in my searches :-)

  • _sophiewheeler
    10 years ago

    They are all seconds or imports, so don't plan on any tight grout lines. Go to a real tile store, and talk to some pros. They can find you some candidates, but your price point is really low for what you're looking for.

  • melle_sacto is hot and dry in CA Zone 9/
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    hollysprings -- thanks for that clarification! Do you have any idea as to why I can find tile in the size/price I'm looking for, but in alternative colors? Does glossy white have a low demand?

    I can probably go back out to a shop tomorrow and keep looking; DH was not happy we couldn't find something I liked at HD. He thought we were going to buy that Marissa Cararra marble-look tile.

  • live_wire_oak
    10 years ago

    White ceramics or porcelains are not the easiest thing to find because white is difficult to get "white". It's worse than the 10,000 posts a year in the Décor Forum asking about the "perfect" white. Most tiles actually aren't all that white when you objectively judge them against a white balance scale, especially the red clay based ones. White glazes vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. And the whitest white tiles are the most expensive because of that difficulty. The whitest white tiles are usually a white bodied porcelain, with an expensive white glaze for the top surface.

    "Plain" is also more difficult to achieve than a tile with a little bit of a swirl or movement to the color, or texture to the finish. A plain glossy tile has to be absolutely perfectly smooth, or you notice it. Simple IS usually the hardest thing to create in any design, because of the much tighter tolerances and no trims to fall back on.

    You're asking for a double whammy, truly white and plain,

  • palimpsest
    10 years ago

    Pure white anything tends to be more expensive. I believe even the ultrawhite Corian and other solid surfaces, and pure white quartzes are all in higher price categories.

    Speckles, swirls, textures, non flat edges and all sorts of "decorative" elements are ways to cover imperfections and deal with potential edge chipping. Plain, flat and white requires a pretty high standard of quality control.

  • melle_sacto is hot and dry in CA Zone 9/
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    Luckily I'm not trying to perfectly match the white tub to the white tile to the white sink basin, the white toilet, and the white Swanstone niche LOL! I like things to not look busy, and since we are tiling the shower and lower half of ALL the walls, I couldn't stand a busy tile any more. And DH didn't want to use anything "too small". :-/

    I'm really surprised, though, although your explanations make a lot of sense. I also just found out the floor tile I loved will take a month to arrive...so I'll be looking for an alternative to that as well.

    I think I found something else on the Home Depot website that I can order for the walls, along with a coordinating bullnose (yay). So hopefully they have an okay floor tile too. I guess our plans to tile using what they had in stock at HD was not a very watertight plan ;-)

  • melle_sacto is hot and dry in CA Zone 9/
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    More searching has potentially paid off :-) Planning to order these white wall tiles w/matching bullnose:

    white tile

    white bullnose

    And these dark grey flooring tiles w/matching bullnose:

    dark floor

    dark floor bullnose

  • melle_sacto is hot and dry in CA Zone 9/
    Original Author
    9 years ago

    Just wanted to update that I ordered the tiles I linked from HD. They are here and are exactly as I had hoped.

    I can't tell, though, if the floor tiles -- which I thought were supposed to be the same color in the body as on the surface -- actually are! :-/ I think the style was described as being "colorbody" but the edges seem lighter than the surface.