Innovations in Ceramic Tile and Natural Stone at Coverings 2024

Story at a glance:

• Coverings is the leading international ceramic tile and natural stone event in North America.
• Nearly 25,000 industry professionals from all over the world met at Coverings 2024, which was held in April in Atlanta.
• Numerous global pavilions featured tile, stone, and more from the US, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Turkey, Portugal, and beyond.

The Coverings 2024 show was all about the senses. Engaging aesthetics drew people in while many were in awe over the feel of wood on a sustainable stone surface. Even the smell of endless cappuccino wafted through much of the expo from the Ceramics of Italy booth (beautifully designed by HDR using vendors throughout the pavilion), while in another area, the sound of a flute could be heard at Stonepeak as musicians filled their space with live music. Exhibitors at this event were engaging to say the least.

This year’s Coverings—the largest ceramic tile and natural stone conference and exhibition in North America—featured more than 1,000 global exhibitors from 40 countries, introducing some of the world’s most innovative tile and stone products. Color and carbon neutrality were among this year’s biggest themes.

“Colors that make you feel grounded are trending on the floor—a lot of browns and amber and gold,” says Roxanne Morris, representing the Tile Council of North America. Those “down to earth” colors continue to be popular, she says, as do blues and stone fruit colors.

“Last year we highlighted the corals and cantaloupes and blushes that were really cozying up our homes, and if you’ve seen the color forecast for 2024, that was confirmed. Two of the forecasters chose peach fuzz and apricot crush. These really restorative nurturing colors are reflecting a focus on holistic lifestyles,” Morris says.

These really restorative nurturing colors are reflecting a focus on holistic lifestyles.

An increased number of carbon conscious and carbon neutral collections across exhibitors was a highlight of Coverings 2024, with several exhibitors showing off new B-Corp certifications and many exhibiting new zero carbon collections.

Coverings 2025 will take place April 29 through May 2 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando.

Here are some of the standouts from the Coverings 2024 show.

Boost by Atlas Concorde

Atlas Concorde showed off its ever-expanding Boost collections at this year’s Coverings 2024. Boost Color celebrates a palette of 14 shades selected by the famous designer Piero Lissoni with a wide decorative range and infinite color combinations. This spring the brand also launched Boost Natural Pro—eight new light and warm colors, selected by the architect Matteo Brioni, for an inviting indoor-outdoor look.

Boost Natural Pro offers new surface finishes for interior and exterior use and a new decorative project dedicated to cladding with a strong natural personality. The surfaces mimic the movement of clay, with its slight irregularities, soft colors, and delicate tone-on-tone nuances.

Pixel by Ceramica Sant’Agostino

Ceramica Sant’Agostino offers one-of-a-kind solutions for special projects. “We are not for big projects because of our price level and the attention to quality,” says CEO Filippo Manuzzi. “We don’t produce millions and millions per meter. We are a medium-sized manufacturer, with a lot of attention to the details.”

Sant’Agostino’s new Pixel collection offers compelling porcelain stoneware in a single 10-by-10 format designed to pair beautifully with the brand’s other collections while transforming rooms into spaces full of depth and character.

The company is unique in that it’s not located where many of the ceramics companies are in Italy. It’s quite literally in the small town of Sant’Agostino. Manuzzi is third-generation. “The company was founded 60 years ago by my grandfather, and we take a different approach,” he says. Because of their distance from the ceramics district, they had to have their own lab. As a result they have their own designs. Manuzzi says many of his competitors have similar designs, working with the same studios. “Here in Sant’Agostino you can see something very unique and special.”

They’ve also been committed to sustainability for decades, including with their ECOQUALITY program focused on preserving the ecosystem with efforts like reforestation, clean energy commitments, and an integrated water management system.

Frammenti Collection by Faetano

 

The Frammenti Collection is inspired by the Venetian terrazzo—a surface that was originally made with crushed stone and small fragments of marble, earthenware, and glass, held together by a kind of cement mortar that was later pressed and polished.

This collection allows designers to bring life to floors with a mix of color and pattern with small size tiles. Ceramica Faetano produces small-size cement and ceramic tiles with original designs for a strong emotional impact. Irregular color dripping leaves a slightly shaded, barely wavy, three-dimensional surface. Small flakes of marble and glass find their elegant geometric composition in space, flanked by a brick format with understated pastel tones.

Essence Collection by Landmark

Essence is a new indoor-outdoor collection launched by Landmark Ceramics earlier this year, with compelling colors like California Gold and Rustic Gold, inspired by the Southwest.

Essence captures the spirit of natural slate—a sedimentary rock loved for its aesthetics and importance in American architecture. The collection embodies two distinctive personalities, one featuring a tone-on-tone graphic and the other an enriched pattern to design a total stone look for both indoor and outdoor applications. Landmark also offers porcelain pavers for many looks.

Landmark is a 100% American ceramic company, based in Mount Pleasant, Tennessee and specialized in producing high-quality porcelain across project types. Their more than 1 million-square-foot facility has an annual production capacity of about 80 million square feet.

Intense Collection by Lea North America

The new Intense collection from Lea Ceramiche took inspiration from sedimentary limestone as it captures the granularities and fossil micro-inclusions typical of this stone. “The stone look is more in demand this year than marble,” says Andrea Boselli, manager at Lea North America.

The Intense collection celebrates recent trends in interior design with warm colors found in nature; think shades like toffee, beige, and, as pictured, crete. Intense comes in a variety of formats, allowing slabs to be used in multiple contexts, at home in many different settings. Choose from variations like Trait, loved for its ridged, irregular chiseling, or Plick, which reproduced a natural organic texture.

Lea also collaborates with Microban to protect to kill germs for the life of the product.

Impasto and Krea 2.0 Collections by Portobello America

 

The Impasto Collection’s range of small-format, satin-finish tiles are inspired by the expressive brushstrokes of artists like Jackson Pollock. This vibrant palette of 16 colors is divided into sky and sunset hues that can be mixed-and-matched to create a designer’s own vertical masterpiece. The 3D tile format adds another compelling dimension.

Portobello America also showed off its Krea 2.0 collection—including a full range of moody, desaturated hues to light and bright greens and blues in its latest small-format, glazed ceramic tiles. Krea 2.0 is available in 4-by-16 format tiles for ease of design.

Portobello America, a subsidiary of the Portobello Group, is based in Baxter, Tennessee. Their 1 million-square-foot facility produces an annual capacity of 60 million square feet of product.

The Onx2 Porcelain Collection from Wonder Porcelain

The Onx² collection is inspired by nature and is at home in luxurious residential settings as well as in hospitality. The collection is available in two patterns and sizes, a single color, and in a polished finish, with an additional mosaic package.

Wonder is a family business that’s committed to sustainability, according to Juan Molina, executive vice president of Wonder Porcelain. All products are made in the US at their Lebanon, Tennessee manufacturing facility, and they source most materials from within 500 miles of the factory. Wonder Porcelain was founded in 2015 as a wholly owned subsidiary of one of the largest and most successful tile companies in the world.

“We recycle 27% of pre-consumer materials back into the body of our tile—one of the highest in business,” Molina says. “It’s a long-term commitment. We’re working very hard to minimize impact on our environment.”

Considering tile’s life cycle of 40 years or more, Molina says it’s great for sustainability. “It’s the right material for the long term life of a project.”