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)!
_______________________________________________________
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.
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.
We saw more than a couple of manufacturers displaying
similar Antique mirror tiles to this one from
Artistic
Tile.
Pillowed edges were everywhere.
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!
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.
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.
