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Terracotta – or literally "earth" "fired" is one of the most basic and oldest building materials ever made. Terracotta is essentially clay that has been fired in a kiln until it becomes hard and semi-vitrified and this material is used to make roof tiles, drainage pipes and floor tiles.

As a flooring material, terracotta has had to compete with a massive range of alternatives that are currently available on the market, ranging from ceramics through to travertine but it would be very difficult to find a material that is quite as "living" as this one.

Spain, Portugal, France, Italy and Mexico are the main countries of origin for most of the terracotta flooring available today and they supply tiles of numerous colours, shapes, thicknesses and quality. The key to buying the best floor for you is to seek good advice. Despite selling this material, some retailers do not seem to know much about the product and this leads to poor sales or worse, bad advice – leaving a customer with a floor that is not what they expected – hopefully this article will help you make an informed choice next time you are considering an investment in a clay floor.

As already mentioned, terracotta tiles come from countries with a temperate clime – this is no co-incidence because many terracotta manufacturers use the sun as a means of air-drying their tiles prior to firing in a kiln. When first made from wet clay, the tiles have to dry naturally before they are put in the kiln, if they weren’t they would simply shatter as the water within them boiled off and expanded. Once

Terracotta Rainscreen are dry they can then be fired in the kiln – the time and temperature of which varies upon the type of tile being produced.

Essentially there are two basic types of tile, hand-made and machine-made, both giving quite different finishes to the floor.

Hand-made tiles are typically more rustic in their appearance and they display much more texture in their finish – some may even have paw prints or birds feet marks in them, where they have been walked on whilst drying outdoors. Hand-made tiles are exceptionally good at disguising dirt as their finish is so variegated and they very much lend themselves to installation in a rustic environment such as a barn conversion etc.

Very often, hand made products are made in a more basic way and kiln temperatures are not as controlled as some machine made products. Some kilns for instance, are fired by wood and often a brisk wind will draw the kiln flu, creating a fluctuation in temperature within the kiln, which causes uneven firing. A consequence of this is that tiles can be produced that have dramatic colour variation within themselves and from tile to tile and also salt-pitting – small pockets of mineral salts that erupt from the surface of the tile ranging in size from a pea up to a golf ball in diameter. Small fissures and cracks in the surface of these tiles is also quite common.

Some hand-made tiles are thrown in a mould that rests on sand, the wet clay is trimmed to size and the tile is pushed out of its mould ready for drying and ultimately firing – one of the accidental benefits of this technique is that one side of the tile is sand-textured and the tiles can be laid "upside down" to create a more rustic effect during installation if preferred by the client.

Machine made terracotta is a much less labour intensive process as much of the work blending and cutting the clay is done by machine – this does give a degree of uniformity to these types and the firing process is usually in electric kilns with a close regulation of temperature that produces a much more uniform and blemish-free product. Be aware that even machine made tiles can still have minor flaws such as bowing and minor salt pitting but these really are a characteristic of the material and should be seen as positives rather than negatives.