Grey Marble Tiles
Grey marble tiles offer the chance to introduce class, elegance, and sophistication into your home while maintaining a darker aesthetic. Thanks to the marble’s neutral but chic palette, they are a popular choice for modern, contemporary settings but can be seen enhancing traditional decor equally well.
You can find grey marble in a range of colours, from brooding and mysterious storm cloud greys to lighter, classic French silver hues. This diverse but complementary nature of grey marble tiles means they can be found in almost every room of the home, including bathrooms, kitchens, living spaces, and more.
Typically, grey marble tiles are used as flooring but also as wall cladding and for decorative purposes. Their density and surprising durability make them an ideal choice for even the most hard-wearing locations.
RMS Marble sources only the highest quality grey marble tiles, with a variety of finishes available.
The Benefits of Grey Marble Tiles:
Beauty and Style
Grey marble tiles originate from multiple sources around the globe, including Italy, Spain, Turkey, Iran, and China. Due to each location’s natural marmoration process, each grey tile exhibits its own patterning and diverse undertones.
This means each and every tile installation is singularly unique, with the rich complexity of grey marble adding an understated sense of luxury.
The stone’s darker fields pair perfectly with light and dark surroundings, evoking feelings of balance when paired with natural woods, brass, and copper.
Durability
The natural transformation of dark limestone into crystallised stone means grey marble is surprisingly durable. Grey marble tiles are therefore the perfect choice for busy households, commercial spaces, and anywhere where you expect a lot of foot traffic. With a darker surface, unfortunate scratches and unforeseen marks are less visible, even when polished.
Versatility
Similarly to white marble, the neutrality of grey marble tiles means they are extremely versatile — capable of enhancing practically any space. Throughout the home, grey tiles can be used as flooring, wall cladding, bespoke benchtops, and splashbacks, with the elegant colouring effortlessly pulling together decor, furniture, and fixtures.
Resale Value
As an increasingly in-demand material, all marble installations will add value to your home. Since grey is a neutral tone, the marketability of your property over time remains unaffected, matching all future decor and design decisions.
Designing with Grey Marble Tiles:
Choosing the Right Type of Grey Marble Tile
Almost all grey marbles can be used as tiles, although the structure of the veining may dictate the thickness required for a successful installation
For bathroom installations, lightly veined marbles such as the warm Porto Di Mar are a great choice. For dramatic flooring, the bold veins of Nordic Grey marble make for an impressive floor tile especially when checkerboarded with white marble.
Colour and Veining
There are a variety of different grey marble tiles on the market, each expressing unique tone, colour, and veining expressions. Within this spectrum, however, there remains a large variation in colours and veining density.
From rich dark greys streaked with discrete white veins to light and airy shades with little veining, consider what combination will work best in your setting.
Choosing the Right Finish
Marble tiles can be finished with a high polish, honed, or a worn leather effect.
Polished grey tiles will enhance the natural contrast and tones within the marble. This will introduce reflected light and highlight the mineral inclusions of each tile.
Honed tiles have a matte effect while retaining a subtle lustre. With grey marble tiles, this gives the stone a natural appearance that works particularly well in wetrooms where a polished finish is not suitable.
For areas of high footfall, a leather finish gives a roughly hewn effect to grey marble that improve grip underfoot. This also helps minimise signs of wear and can enhance the natural grain of marble — perfect for rustic settings.
Integrating Grey Marble Tiles into Your Home Design
Grey marble is suitable for almost any decor and can be easily incorporated into your existing decor. Consider the size and amount of tiles you will need,and whether tiles will need to be cut to accommodate existing features. Tiles typically come in sizes 600x300mm, 600x600mm, and 600x1200mm.
Popular Grey Marble Tiles:
Nordic Grey
A dense marble, Nordic Grey is a strong slate grey stone with streaks of veining that vary from white to taupe. As a tile, Nordic Grey adds texture and interest while remaining tastefully understated.
Belmondo
A cooler grey marble, Belmondo tiles feature swirling pools of neutral colour with only subtle veining. Tundra Grey works in both contemporary settings — where its depth of tone adds diversity without veining — and with more natural decor where the elegant mid-grey enhances wood, copper, and other elements.
Porto Di Mare
For a soft subtle aesthetic Porto Di Mare is light grey marble with limited veining but still exhibiting the variation of colour that distinguishes itself as a luxurious marble. Cut into tiles, this gives flooring a truly luxurious feel to both indoor and outdoor spaces.
Caring for Your Grey Marble Tiles
Used for centuries as flooring, marble tiles adorn many of the world’s most recognised architectural buildings, it is remarkably durable and capable of lasting a lifetime and beyond. To keep your marble looking and performing its best to care for it in the following ways:
Cleaning Grey Marble Tiles
Only use gentle detergents to clean marble tiles, such as household dish soap. Specialised neutral PH stone detergents are available for cleaning natural stone. Ensure that these do not use harsh chemicals or acid as this can penetrate the structure of marble tiles and cause damage.
Protecting Grey Marble Tiles
Marble tiles need to be sealed periodically to keep them looking their best, with wetroom and outdoor tiles requiring more regular attention. This prevents the naturally semi-porous marble from absorbing water by filling micro-gaps on the surface of tile with sealer.
Repairing Grey Marble Tiles
Marble like other stone may get damaged if impacted by heavy falling objects but one of the beauties of stone is the ability to repair these accidents. Stonemasons have various methods of repairing stone using ground marble mixed with epoxy resins. In the case of severely damaged tiles, replacements is a lot easier and cheaper.
Preventing Stains on Grey Marble Tiles
To prevent stains from occurring on your grey marble tiles, ensure your tiles are periodically sealed and avoid contact with acidic liquids.. This is because the material structure of marble errs on the alkaline side with even gentler acids like citric capable of staining and etching tiles with prolonged exposure.
If a spillage does occur, attend to the spill immediately by absorbing the liquid and cleaning the surface of the tile with soap. The appearance of lasting stains can be diminished using a hydrogen peroxide and baking soda solution, left to soak into the affected area for 24 hours.