Travertine/Marble vs Porcelain...

Anyone have experience with both? Can you tell me pros and cons?

Re: Travertine/Marble vs Porcelain...

we have tumbled travertine as our backsplash in our kitchen and I love it. It's variegated and has a more rustic look, as opposed to a more polished. You can also get creative with the color of your grout to create something unique.

Re: Travertine/Marble vs Porcelain...

We have tumbled travertine in our master bathroom and for our back patio. I wanted something that would offer decent traction when wet both outdoors and indoors. (I also wanted travertine outdoors because it doesn't retain heat, so you can walk on it barefoot and it won't burn your feet.)

I love the feel of travertine under my feet. Sounds crazy, but I feel like it has a "soft" feeling despite offering some friction. I also love the aesthetics of it.

I'm not sure if we have ceramic or porcelain in our main bath, but I hate it. It's so slippery when wet. I can't wait to remodel our main bath with a natural stone and most likely the flooring will be tumbled.


Upkeep for travertine is a bit different. you can't use a lot of the cleaning products you would normally use on porcelain, but cleaning products for natural stone are easy enough to find. It's also recommended that you seal travertine annually, but we've only done it once in our bathroom (never outdoors) and it looks the same as the day we had it installed (we do squeegee after every shower., which I believe makes a huge difference regardless of what type of tile you use.)