Concrete cement (CC) tiles

Poured by hand at the works

Every tile is poured by hand in Karachi, into a mould, then cured in stacks before it goes anywhere. Nothing is pressed out of a dry line and nothing is fired. That is slower than an industrial tile, and it is exactly what lets a batch be mixed to a colour instead of picked out of a stock range.

Curing is not a queue, it is part of the specification. A cement tile that leaves before it has cured properly is a cement tile that moves and dusts later. Tiles go out in the order they were poured, and format is a mould question rather than a stock question, so a size outside the usual ones is possible where the area justifies cutting the mould.

Pour

By hand, in a mould

Cure

In stacks, before dispatch

Finish

Matte, unglazed

Consistency, and why one batch matters

Hand poured pigmented cement is mixed in batches, and two batches of one colour will be close rather than identical. Cement is a natural material, the pigment is measured into a wet mix, and the ambient temperature during the cure has a say in the final tone. Within a batch that variation is small and reads as depth. Across batches it can read as a patch.

So order the whole floor at once, including the cuts and a margin of spares, and specify it as a single batch. If the programme forces the job into phases, say so at the quote stage: the batches can be planned and the join set on a threshold or a change of level rather than in the middle of a room.

Keep the spare tiles from the original batch on site once the floor is laid. They are the only exact match that will ever exist for it.

Order

Whole floor, one batch

Spares

Keep from the same batch

Phasing

Declare at quote stage

Where a plain cement tile belongs

Use it where the floor is a ground rather than an event: a gallery or showroom where the work on the wall is the subject, a kitchen or courtyard that wants a flat matte tone, a corridor or stair running between rooms that are doing more. It also works as the field around a patterned panel, or as the calm surface a terrazzo or stone threshold cuts into.

On a wall it behaves the same way and holds a raking light honestly, which is why it suits stairwells and any surface lit from one side. Outdoors it is specified for courtyards and shaded terraces. Where standing water or a real slope is involved, washed terrazzo or a driveway paving unit is the better answer.

The same body, patterned

The Moroccan pattern tile is this tile with a patterned wearing layer poured on top of the same structural body. Same works, same hand pour, same pigments, same cure. That relationship is useful when specifying, because a plain cement field and a Moroccan pattern panel come out of the same mixes, so the colours sit together properly instead of nearly matching.

A common layout uses the pattern as a rug or a border and the plain tile as the field around it. Ask for both samples together and lay them side by side before setting the proportion: a pattern reads much stronger across a room than it does on a plate.