Aesthetically speaking, everyone would love their tiles to always look lovely. Esthetically speaking, custom ceramic tiles need to remain functional in both the domestic and commercial environment.
Apart from the fine art being practiced by tile-making artisans, a number of technical and scientific factors need to be taken into account when designing, baking, processing, distributing and installing custom made tiles. While most consumers will have their pick on pre-prepared tile batches, all ready for immediate laying, it may well be preferential to arrange for the artisan to custom prepare your tiles.
The tiling technician can take into account immediate conditions. Whether the tiles are going to be indoors or outdoors is beside the point. One important factor that is going to be measured is that of climatic conditions. And in the context of tile manufacturing, the preoccupation will be over temperatures. The layman must have wondered about this before, surely. Just how easily in some places, tiles tend to crack. And that's in most cases where hardly a finger was laid on it and every care was taken by the owner to keep the tiles in good condition.
Quite clearly, the tiles where never in any good shape to begin with. What was not taken into account was the tendency for certain materials to expand and contract in response to rising and lowering temperatures. And this account needs to be taken even under moderate or temperate circumstances. Laid tiles not correctly spaced will come into contact with each other, and it will not be long before surface cracks appear.
Also, a great deal of thought by today's top technicians has gone into the cleaning materials being used to keep tiles clean. Not utilized correctly, these could have damaging effects too.