In 2024, our hospitality company renovated the breakroom and demo bar at our corporate office. I am the office administrator for the group, so I handle a lot of the facilities purchasing—roughly 60 to 80 vendor orders a year, and about $400,000 in annual spend when projects are included. I did the tile research, wrote the purchase orders, and coordinated deliveries with the contractor. I am not a designer and I don't install tile. What I can share is what it was like to evaluate, buy, and live with Marazzi tile from a buyer's side. The searches that keep coming back to us are Marazzi Moroccan Concrete, Marazzi Zellige tile, and then a few odd ones—wine glass, liquid glass, even scally cap. Here are the honest answers.
1. Is Marazzi tile good?
Yes for our use—but I would not buy a brand name alone. Marazzi has been making tile since 1935 in Sassuolo, Italy, and it is now part of Mohawk Industries. That background got me to read the spec sheets, not just place an order. What mattered to me was that the tile was porcelain, rated for commercial floor traffic, and met ANSI A137.1 standards. Our floor tile was PEI Class 4, if I remember correctly—don't quote me on that, check the carton. The practical result: 18 months of coffee spills, heels, and service carts, and the floor still looks like the day it was installed.
I also believe the floor is part of the brand. When a visitor sees a chipped or stained tile in a customer-facing space, they don't think “they saved money on tile.” They think the place feels cheap. Buying quality is not the same as buying the most expensive option, but it is also not the place where I try to save the last dollar.
2. What is Moroccan Concrete Marazzi?
Moroccan Concrete is a concrete-look porcelain tile from Marazzi. We used it on the main floor of the breakroom and bar area. It gives the visual of troweled concrete without the sealer and maintenance that real concrete requires. The matte finish also did not turn the room into a mirror under our pendant lights.
One caveat: large-format porcelain needs a flat substrate. The material was not the biggest line item—the floor flattening and labor were. And don't skip grout sealer. The tile doesn't need it, but the grout does. This worked in our situation, but our space is not a production kitchen. If you are installing in a wet area, ask the manufacturer for the wet DCOF value. ANSI A326.3 wants a wet DCOF of 0.42 or above for level interior floors.
3. Is Marazzi Zellige tile worth the hype?
The Marazzi Zellige tile we put behind the coffee and wine bar is glazed porcelain designed to mimic handmade Moroccan zellige. It has color shifts, slightly uneven edges, and a glossy, handcrafted character. If you expect every tile to look the same, you will misread that as a defect. If you buy it for the handcrafted look, it works beautifully.
Our installation mistake taught me something. I told the installer to “blend the tiles so the variation looked natural.” He heard “sort them and make the wall uniform.” We came back to a flat, lifeless wall and had to redo the section (ugh). Write into the work order: variation is part of the finish, do not sort or match tiles, mix from open boxes. In a commercial bar, it still wipes clean easily because it is porcelain, not natural stone.
4. What happens if you drop a wine glass on Marazzi tile?
During our renovation, someone knocked a wine glass off the counter. The glass shattered and the tile surface was fine. That will be the outcome in a lot of real-world cases: the glass loses.
But I would not promise “unbreakable tile” to anyone. No tile is drop-proof. A hard impact at the right angle can chip a glazed tile, especially on an edge. If you are worried about chips, ask the manufacturer or distributor whether the color goes through the full body of the tile. A small chip on a through-body porcelain is much less visible than one on a glazed decorative tile.
Red wine is a different problem. Glazed porcelain resists stains, but grout will happily absorb that same wine glass spill if you let it sit. Seal the grout and clean spills promptly. From a buyer's perspective, the spec sheet is the safest proof of commercial durability—not a marketing line.
5. How do I turn off liquid glass?
If you typed “how to turn off liquid glass” because a polished tile is reflecting everything, here is the buyer-friendly answer: you do not turn it off after installation. You choose a different finish before you order.
Full-polish porcelain can look like liquid glass under lights. That look is not a defect, but it does not fit every space. When our design render showed the bar floor as a mirror, the render artist said he could turn off the reflection effect in the image. That only changed the image—not the real material. If you like glossy but not mirror-like, ask for a satin or lappato finish. For our flooring, we went with the matte Moroccan Concrete surface. The higher-gloss Zellige stayed on the wall, where the shine felt intentional.
6. “Scally cap”—is that a tile term?
No, or at least not a term I found in any Marazzi catalog. A scally cap is a flat cap, the kind you wear on your head. If you actually meant an edge detail, the word you probably want is “cap” as in a cap piece, transition strip, or trim profile. Scalloped decorative trim is a different product and usually a special order.
In our project, the important edge detail was a transition strip between the Marazzi floor and the adjacent wood floor. Tile needs a small expansion gap around the perimeter, and you cover that gap with a base or transition trim. A mismatched, unfinished edge will make an expensive tile installation look like a weekend DIY job. It is worth coordinating early with the contractor.
7. How much extra Marazzi tile should I order?
I always budget for overage, but I have a confession: on the Zellige, I ordered 15% extra because of the color variation. On the large-format floor tile, I ordered 10% and the installer told me that would not have been enough for a diagonal layout—we were lucky we used a straight grid.
Check the run numbers on the boxes too. Tile from different production runs can vary slightly. We stored the remaining spare cartons on a shelf in the maintenance room. A few months later, one tile in the stockroom cracked when a heavy cart hit it, and we were able to replace it with the exact same lot. That spare made me look prepared. Nobody plans a broken tile into the budget, but it happens.
