Calacatta Floor Tile Install

This Cumberland Parkway area townhome living room had original carpet that was removed to install large-format Calacatta marble-look polished porcelain. The polished surface on a Calacatta tile is unforgiving about lippage because any tile edge height difference reflects light and creates a visible line. The substrate on this wood-frame townhome floor required cement board installation before tile to meet deflection requirements for large-format porcelain.

Polished tile also requires white-body thinset, not standard gray, because any gray thinset bleeding into the joint area from underneath would be visible through the tile body at the grout line. We used a polymer-modified white thinset with full back-buttering on every tile to ensure complete coverage without gray show-through.