Flooring - Marble, Vitrified Tile etc.

I am writing this to help new house owner with their home building process.

Our residential house is already completed with Ambaji White Marble. Staircase is all marble except 3 bathrooms; it’s an RCC house with earthquake proof design (Plinth Band and Lintels Band). It’s a two floor house, living room, kitchen-dining room, 4 master bedrooms, 3 bathrooms and small pooja room.  Basically only house cost us approx 18 lacs, with land, painting (outside and inside), marble staircase, better windows (hag wood), pyramid roof on balcony, extra third bathroom, there was a gaping hole from the outside so we extended house on second floor with  pooja room. (compound (fence) wall and initial start up cost came out to 25 lacs.

Let’s say you had a choice to use marble, tile or vitrified tile, etc. What would you choose? The house covers approx. 2000 sq-ft  (ground and top floor) the budget for the flooring is about 2 lacs. We didn’t want expensive floor, neither did we want very cheap floor. We wanted something in moderate expense range so to say in the middle. I was watching Sajawaat (home) television program dubbed in Gujarati. On it, the host said top marble in India is Makarana number 1 followed by number 2 Ambaji marble (assuming white in color). Italian marble is also up in top somewhere.

In the beginning when we were building ours house, I was thinking about going with vitrified tile for the appearance factor. My brother on the other hand wanted marble. I did a little bit for reading on marble and found out the white is pure stuff while black vein is impurities. So I wanted complete white look. After looking at some website pictures I thought Ambaji White Marble is the most white you white can get. Later, looking a list of marble found out that Ambaji White Marble come in several classes as is the case with Makarana marble. Some have black vein other has blue vein.

 Our house got black vein Ambaji marble to my disappointment. (Appearance factor) I was hoping for light black smudge marks on Ambaji marble. My brother is telling me it’s normal no big deals. According to Priti on gharexpert, information  I am getting is veining is OK .  Do they have 100 % pure white Ambaji white marble? I’ll bet they are costly. How much for a slab? Ambaji Super White cost about 400-500 rupee per slab. According to the List of Marble. Is this price in high range?

I heard that cheaper white marble turns Yellow over time. Is this true? Does it apply to Ambaji white marble? Does it occur with improper cleaning solvent?

One of my uncles is selling dark green marble, which we had a chance to select. But I didn’t because it wasn’t Makarana or Ambaji marble. I was also thinking that white marble would light up the room much better than dark green marble which would eat up more light.

I had a pleasure of talking to our contractor, once. He said, every type of tile you put in India will pop out eventually. Probably has to do with heat. Is this true? Where as marble slab stay fixed for extended period of time. I have another uncle who built a new house and he went with tiles or vitrified tile. The tile floor came out all uneven, one tile higher then the other. Is this poor grouting?  poor contractor job? both?

Comment on residential and commercial tile. Can one use commercial tile (shopping mall) for residential (house) purpose? The reason why I am asking one could get heavy duty tile for their house, even though it could be costly. Or is it strictly residential tile for house and commercial for shopping mall.

If I find out, marble is not the latest trend that would be another disappointment. If one puts wooden floor,  that would get eaten by termites. I haven’t seen no house with wooden floor in our town.

I included three sheets of marbles and their price list in pdf file format. Only if it had size of slab it would have been great. See if you can pick out some excellent marble in moderate price range? Put a check mark or highlight one on list of pdf so it can be useful for other people.

Feel free to add any information or List of material for flooring that are readily available in India. The objective here is to help new house owner.