The Beach House renovation: Why we used tile throughout our house

When in Rome. Or almost there. I wouldn't dream of putting anything else on my floors in Italy than tiles. When I grew up, we used to have marble and wood on the floors, but that was in an apartment where the wood didn't have any humidity issues, and, yes, the marble was too cold in winter. Then I saw the results of humidity on the gorgeous wooden floor when we first visited our Lucca pad; we had to rip the original chevron flooring out and replace it with tiles.

In the Beach House house, I didn't even consider anything else. We are close to the beach; the house can be a sandy mess. If you live in a cold climate and don't have floor heating, I wouldn't recommend tiles, but in any other circumstance, there is nothing that is that easy and that good-looking. And when almost in Rome, Tuscany to be exact, the spring, summer, and autumn are hot, and tiling your floor helps to keep your house cool.

So the only thing I would consider is Cotto; I loved the Cotto flooring in our Cedar house; it is durable, easy to clean, atmospheric, and gorgeous.

Every year after Cersaie, I check out all the new collections, but I keep returning to these two companies: Marazzi and Cotto D'Este. Marazzi is the company that knows what is going on in the design world; for example, the wide wooden flooring in Oak color we choose, and Cotto D'Este, produce ultra-thin tiles that you can place over existing ones if you would like. It is a more expensive product, but they are simply stunning. I did enquire about a Cotto floor in the bathroom; look at this example; so beautiful, but in the end, I fell in love with the brick flooring by Kronos Ceramiche.

So for the Pine Tree house, we used pale wood, oak in two shades, limestone, brick, weathered brick, and marble in the bathroom. The only ones left to choose are the kitchen and laundry room ones, but I still have a lot of leftover tiles, so let's see.