Quarry tile is hard to make, so most tile manufacturers prefer to dry press their ceramic and porcelain tiles. It’s cheaper, quicker and that’s why there’s so much out their.

The most common way of making ceramic tile is the dry press process. The dry press method uses very little water in mixing their clays, so there is less shrinkage. They pour a slightly moist clay powder mix into a form in huge hydraulic presses to press out their tiles. The pressure used in forming these tiles creates tremendous heat which keeps the pressed clay tile together. The tile then heads off to be dried and fired…all robotically. To get the desired color, these tiles are then glazed on the surface so the color is really more of a veneer. 

Quarry tiles use about 21% water in mixing their clays, so the drying process is much more difficult. And the extruding process is even more challenging. Quarry tiles are really the old-world way of making ceramic floor tiles. 

Mixing the highest quality clays with water, powerful machines then extrude the special mixture into slabs of wet clay. They are then carefully dried and precisely fired to temperatures over 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit.

Magically, as the clay bodies consolidate under the high firing temperatures in the kiln, the raw tiles transform their colors into beautiful natural earth tones including reds, browns and yellows with very low porosity. The result is a finely crafted floor tile that has tremendous breaking strength, is scratch resistant and can be used both indoors and out for both residential and commercial applications.