What flooring lasts the longest?

When a customer comes into your store and expresses a need for a long-lasting floor, what do you answer? 

The short answer is ceramic tiles. They'll outlast any synthetic floor, natural wood, reinforced concrete or even steel by thousands of years!

Synthetics eventually degrade due to UV radiation, natural wood dries out or rots, concrete crumbles in time due to chemical action and all steel eventually rusts. These products will easily outlast their guarantee period but only ceramics are forever. The reason being that ceramics are vitified, meaning turned to glass. Technically in our industry this means having a water absorption of less that 0,5%, effectively the definition of porcelain.

To illustrate this answer I'd like you to take a look at some mosaics recently discovered in the ancient city of Zeugma in Turkey. Mosaics are essentially small glazed tiles (tesscera). The mosaics date back to 2nd century BCE, in other words they are over 2200 years old and in almost perfect condition.


One of the most amazing artifacts in the area is a collection of mosaics. Mosaics adorned the houses of wealthy residents that lived here thousands of years ago. Excavations at Zeugma started in 2007 and continue to this day.



The rising waters of the massive Birecik Dam on the Euphrates River brought about an emergency effort to salvage the artifacts left behind by the Roman civilization that once prospered here.

As the flood waters rose higher and higher, there was a lot of pressure to excavate the city. The image above shows the floodwaters rising over a mosaic floor. Today, 25% of the ancient town’s western bank is submerged 200-feet underwater and the eastern bank of the city is completely underwater. Still, there remains so much to be uncovered and learned in Zeugma.

It just goes to show, if you want a floor that will last more than a lifetime there's really only one choice... ceramic tile.

All the best from KREM tiles and the Link International team.