What Is the Difference Between Ceramic and Porcelain Tile?

Ceramic and porcelain tile can look almost identical when you're standing in a flooring store looking at samples, so it's understandable why people wonder what the actual difference is.

The simplest answer is that porcelain is actually a type of ceramic tile. The biggest practical difference is how dense the tile is and how much water it absorbs. Under industry standards, porcelain tile has a water absorption rate of 0.5% or less.

That lower water absorption is one of the reasons porcelain is commonly chosen for bathrooms, kitchens, showers, high-traffic floors, and certain outdoor applications. It's generally denser and harder than standard ceramic tile and handles moisture and heavy use very well.

Ceramic tile shouldn't be looked at as the cheap or bad version of porcelain, though. It's still a very durable flooring and wall material when you're using the right tile for the right application. Ceramic is generally easier to cut and work with, and it can also be less expensive. That can make it a great choice for backsplashes, walls, decorative areas, and many residential floors.

Porcelain being harder can actually make installation a little more difficult. You're dealing with a denser material, so cutting and drilling it can require better tooling and sometimes more labor. That's something customers don't necessarily think about when comparing the price of two boxes of tile. The material price isn't the only thing that can affect the finished cost of the floor.

So, is porcelain better than ceramic?

I wouldn't put it that simply.

If we're installing a floor in an area that's going to see a lot of traffic, moisture, or abuse, we're probably going to lean toward porcelain. If we're doing a backsplash, wall, decorative area, or another application where those performance characteristics aren't as important, ceramic may make perfect sense.

There's also a huge range of quality within both categories. We wouldn't choose a tile just because the box says "porcelain." We'd rather look at where the tile is going, how that space is going to be used, the manufacturer's specifications for that particular product, and then decide what makes sense.

And regardless of which one you choose, neither porcelain nor ceramic makes up for a bad installation. The substrate still needs to be properly prepared, the correct setting materials need to be used, and the tile needs to be installed correctly. The current TCNA Handbook likewise treats proper design, construction, and preparation of the substructure as fundamental to a tile installation.

So the difference between ceramic and porcelain isn't really about one being good and the other being bad. They're different options within the same tile family.

For us, the better question is: what are we tiling, and which one makes the most sense for that space?