Cevisama Trends 2024

As I wasn’t there to gather up goodies, collect curiosities, and scout the trends, Joe (my dad and Tile Addict in chief) did all Cevisama the leg work for me, writing up a full report of everything that was worth seeing. And here is what he had to say about the trends.

1) Light Cotto and Deep Green

There are currently two clear colour trends. The first is light cotto – now the background tone of choice in both wall and floor tiles. This is a more welcoming and warmer alternative to grey and griege, and also speaks to ceramic tile’s proud heritage. There is no doubt that this cotto trend – with stunning examples on the Codicer 95, Natucer, Vives, and Cerlat stands – is not going to go away any time soon.

And the key accent colour for 2024, is a deep, resonant, green. Powerful, solid, greens – many with a clear Victorian influence – really came to the fore this year. They were often shown next to equally strong navy blues; another colour long associated with ceramics.

2) Fluted

Regarding shape, there were a lot of fluted tiles, in both small and large formats. These were seen on wood-effect tiles, to create soft routed and sanded looks, or to emulate something like the wooden deck of a yacht. Fluting was also used add visual interest to stone-effect and marble tiles, with echoes of carved columns, or church panelling.

3) Textured Stone

Larger wall and floor tiles featured stone effects influenced by the surface patterns of Ceppo de Gres, or terrazzo effects with pale inclusions. Here the ability to offer similar stone-influenced patterns in different beiges, greys, browns, or sand colours took stone-effect tiles away from slavish imitations of nature into a new design space.

We are also seeing more and more designs that fuse different natural influences into a single coherent design. Typical examples include stone-concrete composites, plaster-timber combos; and wood and stone fusions. Marble-effects could be found paired with glass, granite, resin, or other materials. I expect many more creative collections to feature on tiles in the years ahead.

4) Travertine

Following on from last year’s Cersaie, travertine remains a popular inspiration for stone-effect tiles. The prominence of this stone-effect, together with the surge in popularity of cotto, means that the overall tile palette at Cevisama was somewhat warmer than in 2023.

5) Innovative Glazes

Finally, a word about glazes. For me, the two main takeaways from Cevisama were reactive glazes, and liquid gloss digital detailing.

Reactive glazes are nothing new, but the main practitioners like Natucer, have found new ways to use this finish to bring fresh allure to wall tiles. Digital gloss detailing, in the other hand, is bringing more precise detailing to a design space that had been occupied more recently by digital glues and granilla effects. The advantage of liquid application, it seems, lies in the greater accuracy and definition it provides. This means that you can use gloss glaze to highlight the flowers on a satin-finish botanical design, for instance. This technology is even finding its way onto floor tiles, such as picking out concave forms on patterned tiles, so that the gloss sparkle sits below the wear surface, allowing good non-slip performance paired with gloss design impact. This was perhaps the single greatest innovation at Cevisama: with Mayari by Harmony being a good example.

Sinking or carving inks, used to bring embossed-in-register impact to wood-grains or marbles, is still a strong trend, with stunning examples on the Vives stand.

Honourable mention: Mini Brick

When it comes to format, my eye was drawn to the many 50 by 150mm (2in by 6in) mini-brick ranges on show. Matt, satin, and glass examples could be seen throughout the show. They rubbed shoulders with some fresh geometrics, notably from Alttoglass’s Cobsa brand.