While thumbing through Sunset magazine one rainy day, Karen Webb stumbled upon an article about a woman who makes glass tiles for a living.
Webb, a television graphics artist from Northern California, felt like she’d been hit by a bolt of lightning.
“Here I’ve been making glass plates as a hobby for the last four years,” she says. “I just never thought of glass tile. And then once I thought about it … I saw it everywhere.”
From the Sunset Idea House in Valencia to the Bellagio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, decorative glass tile is showing up in America’s bathrooms, kitchens and alongside pools. It’s making its way into other areas of the house, too, as accent pieces on fireplaces, light fixtures and floors.
“It really crosses over all different mediums,” says Webb, whose Pescadero-based Tree Street Design firm was tapped by Sunset magazine to help decorate its new Southern California Idea House.
Webb’s vibrant glass tiles are featured in an upstairs girl’s bathroom, where they frame a mirror and are scattered on the wall above the bathtub. And when the magazine opens its next idea house in Phoenix this October, it will showcase her “works of art” around the pool.
Webb is among a small but growing niche of specialty glass tile-makers evolving a genre that dates back to ancient Egypt and Rome. Today’s tile, with its surface effects and wide range of light-radiating colors, adds a depth not found in more traditional ceramic or stone.
Yet glass tile is so versatile it can resemble its ceramic cousin. Tom Silva, general contractor for PBS’ home improvement show “This Old House,” recalls installing a glass tile entryway in a ranch-style home that “looked like ceramic tile … that’s the funny thing about it.”
But in the eight years or so since that episode originally aired, manufacturers have come up with a variety of styles and textures, from glossy to leathery. The new finishes can help prevent slips, one of the product’s few disadvantages along with its susceptibility to scratches.
Still, the decision to go with glass over the more popular ceramic or stone is ultimately driven by design and cost. Price can range from $10 per square foot to upward of $100 per square foot for custom tile.
“I won’t lie to you–they’re expensive,” says Webb, whose pebble design, for example, sells for $84 a lineal foot. “But if you don’t use a whole lot of them and just kind of sprinkle them around, you’ll find they look really nice.”
In some cases, consumers choose glass tile because of a conscious desire to protect the environment.
“We’re taking from consumers and industry and creating recipes out of the glass that we’re finding in the waste stream to make our blazestones,” says Chris Munford, architectural product manager for Seattle-based Bedrock Blazestone.
Manufacturers who produce tiles from 100 percent recycled glass are few. But they’re getting a boost from consumers seeking earth-friendly building materials, like wood harvested from sustainable forests, nontoxic paints and recycled goods.
But glass isn’t invincible, caution tile makers.
“What I tell people is that the same bowling ball you’re going to drop on your countertop that breaks your ceramic tile is going to break your glass tile,” Munford says.