Jeremy Parcels: Trend-Spotting from Coverings 2012

Last month I spent an awesome few days in Orlando with fellow industry professionals at the Coverings Show. It's THE tile and stone show and features a who's who of heavyweights in the tile and stone industry.

HUGE thanks to Jeremy Parcels from RJM Contractors for sharing his experience(and letting me run around with him)!

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Recently I had the pleasure of attending Coverings: The Ultimate Tile + Stone Experience for the first time. This international show has a distinctive European influence brought in by two of the shows major sponsors Tile of Spain and Tile of Italy. This comes as no surprise since the Spanish and Italians have made the best tile in the world for 100’s of years. The booths at this trade show were far different than others I have attended and each seemed to have its own lounge area like this one from Cerdomus.

You were invited to sit down and perhaps enjoy a coffee or a bite to eat while seeing their latest selections and conducting business. The hospitality put out by the exhibitors was quite refreshing and it kept you in the booth to examine their products more closely. While I was attending this show in Orlando I was fortunate to have Nick with me to check out all the latest and greatest in the world of tile and stone. While perusing the isles of tiles, Nick was nice enough to ask me to share with you many of the trends we saw on the show floor. Some have already made their way into our showrooms and some that are yet on the horizon.

I had a couple of requests for high gloss tile before the show. This made me ask myself, is it coming back in style? Walking down one isle at coverings my suspicions were confirmed. Beautiful glossy tiles were everywhere. While I have to admit these aren’t my favorite because of how slippery they can be, I do see how they can make a big statement in a space.  

Glossy directional from Bedrosians

Large format tile has been rising in popularity over the last year and this year seems to be headed in the same direction. Like these large pieces from New Ravenna by Giovanni Barbieri.

Mosaics have been very popular over the last couple of years and the demand for high end mosaics seems to be continuing. Nick and I were blown away by the new lines from New Ravenna.

Handcrafted tile these beauties could be easily missed if you were concentrating on the larger booths. But the craftsman type tiles are big with homeowners right now.

Avente Tile

We saw more than a couple of manufacturers displaying similar Antique mirror tiles to this one from Artistic Tile.

Pillowed edges were everywhere.

ADEXusa

Faux wood is another trend continuing from last year which I get many requests for in my showroom. The great part about these tiles is that they are sustainable surfaces suitable for wet areas and are even available in hand scrapped textures!

Lamosa

Textured Tile can help bring another dimension to a design and it was on display big time at Coverings both in large format pieces and Mosaics.

Vitra

ADEXusa

Coverings is a great show that I plan on continuing to attend and hopefully Nick will be joining me again because he kept me entertained for two days! Please feel free to check out my blog for design and construction related topics RJM Blog.