How to Choose a Metal Backsplash for Your Countertops and Cabinets

Most kitchens hand you the answer before you start looking. The counter is already in, the cabinets are already hung, and between them those two surfaces have set the temperature of the room, its pattern load and how much light bounces around at eye level. Knowing how to choose a backsplash is mostly a matter of reading what is already there and then picking a finish that agrees with it. Start with the surfaces you are not replacing A backsplash is the last flat plane to go in and the smallest, which is exactly why it should be chosen last and chosen to serve. Write down three things before you shortlist a single tile: the dominant color of your countertop, whether that counter is busy or quiet, and whether your cabinets read warm or cool. Those three notes settle most of it. A busy counter wants a calmer wall. A quiet counter can carry a pattern. Warm cabinets pull toward gold and copper; cool and painted cabinets sit better with silver. Everything after this is refinement. One more note worth taking: how much of the wall you actually intend to cover. A short run between the counter and the upper cabinets behaves differently from a full-height field that climbs past a window. Pattern that charms you across eighteen inches can shout across five feet. How to choose a backsplash color for your countertop Countertops fall into two camps for this purpose, and it has nothing to do with what they cost or what they are made of. Either the surface has movement in it or it does not. Granite and other counters with visible movement A granite countertop, heavily veined stone or anything with strong flecking is already doing pattern work in the room. Put an equally busy backsplash above it and the two compete across the whole eighteen inches of wall, which reads as noise, not richness. The reliable move is to pull one of the quieter colors out of the stone, usually a mid-tone and rarely the darkest fleck, and find a metal finish that lands near it. A weathered copper tone like Patina Copper does this well against warm-toned stone, because a weathered patina finish reads as a broken, worked surface rather than a flat block of color, so it meets the counter halfway instead of arguing with it. Quartz and other quiet counters Solid-color quartz countertops, single-tone solid surface and plain laminate give you the opposite freedom. There is no pattern to compete with, so the backsplash becomes the only decorated plane in the sightline and can carry real ornament. This is where a pressed pattern earns its keep. Silver Fleur against a plain white or grey counter is the classic version of this: the relief supplies all the interest, and the counter stays the calm surface it was chosen to be. Black and dark countertops Dark counters are the one case where contrast is not optional. A dark backsplash above a dark counter erases the line between them and the eye reads one heavy mass from the floor to the cabinets. Something reflective breaks that up. A silver or gold-accented tile catches the under-cabinet lights and gives the counter an edge to end on. If you want depth without brightness, a mid-tone with metallic detail works better than either extreme. Cabinets set the temperature Ask what backsplash goes with white cabinets and you will get a hundred answers, because white cabinets accept nearly anything. That is genuinely true and it is also unhelpful, so here is the narrower version: white cabinets do not constrain your choice, which means the countertop and the room's light get to decide instead. In a north-facing kitchen, warm metal keeps white cabinets from going grey. In a bright south-facing room, silver stays crisp rather than cold. Wood cabinets are the opposite. Oak, walnut and stained maple all carry a strong undertone, and that undertone is the single loudest color signal in the room. Warm metal agrees with them. Rustic Farmhouse, a soft green ground with gold ornamental detail, is a useful case because it is not a straightforward warm finish: the green cools it enough to sit beside honeyed oak without turning the corner into a wall of amber. Painted cabinets in a real color (sage, navy, deep green) need the backsplash to step back. Either echo the cabinet color at lower saturation, or go metallic-neutral and let the cabinets be the color story. Two saturated colors facing each other across a counter rarely settles. Teal and Silver Leaves is a deliberate exception: it works precisely where the cabinets are neutral and you want the backsplash to be the thing people notice. Why metal behaves differently from a color sample A paint chip and a stone sample look roughly the same at nine in the morning and nine at night. Real metal does not. Because WallWear tiles are pressed from water-resistant aluminum rather than printed to look like it, the raised pattern has actual depth, and depth means the pattern catches light from one angle and falls into shadow from another. Practically, that means two things. Your under-cabinet lighting is part of the decision, not an afterthought: warm bulbs push a gold finish warmer and can flatten a cool silver. And a metal backsplash will look like several slightly different backsplashes over the course of a day, which is a feature, though only if you have seen it happen before the whole wall is up. Test it on the wall, not on the counter It is easy to approve a backsplash lying flat on the countertop under a ceiling light, and easy to regret it once it is up on the wall. Vertical surfaces receive light completely differently from horizontal ones. Tape a single tile flat to the wall at the actual height, liner still on, and live with it there for two full days. Look at it in morning light, under the under-cabinet lights at night, and with the range hood light on. Stand where you normally stand: at the sink, at the island, and in the doorway coming in. Photograph it. The camera flattens sheen and shows you what the wall will read like from across the room. A finish that still looks right across all four checks is unlikely to surprise you later. The metal backsplash ideas guide is worth a pass at this stage for how finishes read in finished rooms rather than as samples. The practical constraints that outrank taste Some of the decision is arithmetic, and it is better done before you order than after. Field size. Each pack holds ten 8-inch tiles, which the product pages put at approximately 4.44 square feet of coverage. Measure the run and buy for the cut pieces, not just the flat area. Where the run starts and stops, and where the cut tiles land, is a design decision in its own right, and the guide to the field behind the stove covers it properly. The stove. WallWear recommends maintaining at least 10 inches (25.4 cm) of space between the metal tile and the stovetop to help protect the tiles from excessive heat exposure. That clearance can change where your field starts, so check it against your range before you settle on a layout. Upkeep. Water-resistant aluminum wipes down easily, which matters more behind a cooktop than behind a coffee station. It is water-resistant rather than waterproof, so it belongs in splash zones and not in standing water. Installation. There is no grout, no special tools and no professional help required, though you will trim tiles to fit using a box cutter or scissors. If you want the sequence before you commit, start with the full installation guide. Frequently Asked Questions How do you choose a kitchen backsplash color? Take the color cue from your countertop and the temperature cue from your cabinets. If the counter has movement, match a mid-tone from within it and keep the backsplash calmer. If the counter is a solid color, you have room for pattern. Warm cabinets favor gold and copper finishes, cool and white cabinets accept silver or warm metal depending on the room's natural light. What backsplash goes with white cabinets? Nearly anything, which is why the decision should pass to the countertop and the light instead. With white cabinets and a busy counter, choose a quieter metal finish. With white cabinets and a plain counter, a pressed pattern gives the room the detail the cabinets are not providing. In a low-light kitchen, warm metal keeps white cabinetry from reading grey. What color backsplash works with black countertops? Something with enough contrast to keep the counter from merging into the wall. A reflective silver or a gold-accented pattern catches under-cabinet light and gives the dark surface a clean upper edge. Avoid a dark backsplash directly above a dark counter unless you deliberately want the two to read as a single mass. What backsplash goes with quartz countertops? Most quartz is a solid color or a fine, even pattern, so it is not competing for attention. That leaves the backsplash free to carry the ornament in the room, which is where a pressed metal relief does its best work. If your quartz has dramatic veining, treat it like natural stone instead and pick the calmer finish. Should the backsplash match the countertop or the cabinets? Neither, exactly. Matching a countertop too closely loses the seam between the two planes, and matching cabinets can leave the wall looking unfinished. Aim for a finish that shares an undertone with one of them while differing in value or texture. That relationship reads as intentional where an exact match usually reads as a compromise. Can you put a metal backsplash over an existing tile backsplash? Often, yes, provided the existing surface is sound, clean and reasonably flat. Deep or wide grout lines are the usual complication, so look at the wall before you order. The guide to metal tile over existing tile covers the prep and what to do about grout lines.

There is usually a four-inch strip of countertop stone sitting loose in the box it shipped in, or a faint gray bloom on the paint behind the faucet. Both are the same question arriving from different directions, and a bathroom backsplash answers to a different water pattern than a kitchen one. Knowing how to install a vanity backsplash starts well before any adhesive comes out, with two things you can check in a minute: what the wall behind the vanity is made of, and how far off it the vanity sits. Does a bathroom vanity need a backsplash? Only when the wall behind it is unprotected. You need a backsplash for a bathroom vanity when that wall is painted drywall, wallpaper or bare board. If it is already tiled, stone, or a sealed panel running to the countertop, anything you add is a design decision rather than a defensive one. Many prefabricated vanity tops now ship with no splash at all, or with a loose strip rather than a molded one, on the assumption that the wall gets treated separately. Skipping it does nothing dramatic at first, which is why it gets ignored. Handwashing and toothbrushing throw a fine spray that lands, dries and lands again in the same band of wall. Over months it streaks the paint and then softens it, starting at the bottom edge. How high should a vanity backsplash be? Four inches is the standard, measured up from the countertop, with six inches and full height as the usual steps beyond it. The number is a fabrication convention: the strip is cut from the offcut of your own slab, so the height is partly whatever the fabricator had left. The measurement that actually matters is taken from the sink rim. Backsplash height by sink type: undermount, drop-in, vessel Undermount. The shortest fall distance and water drains inward. Four to six inches covers it. Drop-in. Water pools on the deck at the rim, so the horizontal seal at the counter matters as much as the height above it. Vessel. The demanding case. The spout arcs up and over a bowl five or six inches tall, so water falls further and bounces outward. A four-inch splash behind a vessel sink stops at about the rim of the bowl and does very little. If your spout sits higher than four inches, raise the splash to match. Beyond that, stop the field on a line the room already has: the underside of the mirror, a window sill, the switch plate, or the ceiling. An arbitrary stopping height is the choice that reads as a mistake from the doorway, even to someone who could not say why. In eight-inch tile the landings are 8, 16, 24 and 32 inches above the counter. How to attach a vanity backsplash: bond it to the wall, not the counter The wall and the vanity are separate structures that move independently, and the backsplash sits across the join. So it bonds to the wall, while the joint where it meets the countertop gets a flexible seal rather than a rigid one. Bond both planes rigidly and the seam cracks, because the two structures keep moving after the adhesive has stopped. This is the industry standard, not an opinion. The TCNA Handbook treats a change of plane as a movement joint and calls for an elastomeric sealant over backer rod, not cementitious grout. In a wet zone that means 100 percent silicone, and on natural stone a neutral-cure silicone labeled stone-safe, since standard acetoxy silicone can stain porous stone permanently. Acrylic and latex caulks go in more easily, and they are the usual reason a splash seam ends up gray and split. Peel and stick metal tile simplifies the wall side of the job, since there is no mortar bed to float and no grout to fill. The counter joint rule is unchanged: one continuous flexible bead where tile meets stone, nothing rigid. How to fill the gap between the vanity and the wall Hold a straightedge flat against the wall behind the vanity and look for daylight. Walls bulge near corners and around plumbing, and framing goes out of plumb. Some gap is normal. What you find determines the fix: Hairline to 1/4 inch. A color-matched silicone bead closes it. 1/4 to 1/2 inch. Foam backer rod sized about 25 percent wider than the gap, pressed in first, then caulked over. Caulk alone sags and splits. Over 1/2 inch. A trim piece or a scribed filler strip. Past an inch, have the vanity's fit looked at before you treat the gap. Surface-applied tile adds one more consequence. When the vanity stands off the wall, the tile plane and the back edge of the countertop sit on different planes with a void between them, and a surface-applied tile is not what spans that gap. That decides whether you run the field down to the counter, or stop above the lip and seal the shelf below. Should you remove the old 4-inch backsplash first? Often you should not. A full-height field of tile above a retained stone lip is the combination that tends to look unresolved: two materials, two termination lines and a ledge collecting dust between them. Either commit to the stone and stop above it cleanly, or take it off. If it stays and you tile over it, our notes on prepping an existing tiled surface apply. Before you touch it, confirm the splash is a separate piece. Cultured-marble and one-piece integral tops often have the splash molded in rather than glued on, with no seam and no caulk line where it meets the deck. Those cannot be removed at all, and prying or heating one destroys the top. If you cannot find a caulk line at the deck, stop. If it goes, a factory splash is held by three bonds rather than one: adhesive behind it, caulk along the top, caulk along the bottom. Score both caulk lines, then soften the adhesive with a hair dryer or a heat gun on its lowest setting, kept moving and held a few inches off the surface. Keep heat away from wallpaper, laminate and solid-surface countertops, and away from the faucet and its supply lines. A long stone strip is heavier and more fragile than it looks and often breaks coming off, so wear eye protection and gloves, cover the countertop and sink with cardboard, and lift the stone up and away rather than dragging it across the top. Drywall paper tears when that adhesive comes off. Seal exposed paper first with a water-free primer-sealer such as shellac or an oil-based primer, then fill, sand and prime, since water-based compound applied straight onto torn paper bubbles. Widespread tearing means skim-coating the zone. Wear a dust mask while sanding, and in a house built before 1978, check the EPA's lead-safe guidance first. How to install a vanity backsplash in metal tile The surface has to be clean, smooth, dry, sound and fully cured. Glossy, chalky, flaking, heavily textured or freshly painted walls need work first, and a bathroom wall is usually at least two of those. If it shows gray or black spotting, clean it off and let the wall dry before covering anything, and trace the source if it returns: metal tile is not permeable, so anything wet behind it stays wet and out of sight. Our step-by-step guide to installing peel and stick metal tile covers prep and the peel-press rhythm in full. What follows is only what changes behind a vanity. Set your layout line off the mirror, not the counter. Countertops are rarely level, and the mirror is what the eye reads. Work outward from its centerline so cut tiles land symmetrically at both ends. Dry-lay the run before peeling anything. Ten minutes of dry-laying shows you where the cuts land. Press the strip behind the faucet first. The inch or two directly behind a deck-mount faucet base is the hardest place to get firm hand pressure, and where water arrives most often. Trim to fit with a box cutter or scissors. Wear gloves, since cut aluminum edges are sharp. No grout, no saw, no contractor. For outlets and corners, see how to cut metal tile around outlets and corners. Each 10-pack covers approximately 4.44 square feet in 8 by 8 inch tiles. For a field running 24 inches up from the countertop: Vanity width Field area 10-packs (estimate, incl. 10% waste) 24 in 576 sq in 1 30 in 720 sq in 2 36 in 864 sq in 2 48 in 1,152 sq in 2 60 in double 1,440 sq in 3 Measure your own wall before ordering. Cuts around a faucet, an outlet or an out-of-square corner use more than a clean rectangle does, and a spare pack costs less than a second shipment. Working around the faucet, mirror and outlet Single-lever faucet handles travel backwards through their arc, so the clearance that fails is behind the handle, not under the spout. Two inches behind the handle is the working minimum; the spec drawing gives the exact figure. With a wall-mount faucet, adding wall thickness shortens the exposed valve shank, and past a point the spout and handles no longer have enough to engage. Check the valve's rated finished-wall thickness before you tile, and treat a shortfall as a plumbing job. In the US, electrical codes generally put a GFCI-protected receptacle within about three feet of the sink, so there is usually an outlet inside the field you are tiling. Metal tile conducts, so switch off the circuit at the breaker and confirm the outlet is dead with a non-contact tester before you fit anything near it. Adding a finished surface also changes how far the box sits back, and code caps that setback at a quarter inch in noncombustible material. Use a listed box extender; longer screws leave the device short of the finished surface. Have an electrician confirm before you close anything up. Run the field behind the mirror where you can, so the plane stays uninterrupted and a future mirror swap does not expose a bare patch. That means taking the mirror down, so check how it is hung: a clipped or bracketed mirror comes off with two people and gloves, while one glued straight to the wall will usually break, and stopping the tile cleanly at its edge is the better call. A busy pattern does real work opposite a mirror, breaking up reflected light instead of throwing it back as one flat sheet of glare, which is why Silver Fleur reads as light rather than as a second mirror. Where the hardware is warm, Patina Copper and the gold-accented Rustic Farmhouse pick up brass fixtures without matching them exactly. Frequently Asked Questions Do you caulk a vanity backsplash at the top and the bottom? Both, but with different products and for different reasons. Seal the bottom joint, where the backsplash meets the countertop, with a continuous bead of 100 percent silicone. That is where water collects and the two structures move. The top edge into painted drywall is a finish decision: a color-matched flexible bead is the usual treatment where there is no trim. What is the standard vanity backsplash height? Four inches above the countertop is the standard, with six inches and full height as the common alternatives. It is a fabrication convention rather than a performance figure, since the strip is usually cut from your countertop's offcut. Measure from your sink rim instead, and raise the height if your faucet spout sits above four inches. Can you use peel and stick tile instead of a stone vanity backsplash? Yes, on a wall that is sound and smooth. WallWear's aluminum tiles list bathroom vanity walls and powder rooms among their uses, install with no grout and trim with a box cutter or scissors. You lose the monolithic stone look and gain a surface you can install yourself, without a slab, a template or a fabricator's lead time. How close to the shower or tub can a vanity backsplash go? Metal tile is water-resistant, which suits a vanity splash zone but not a wet zone. Keep the field on the vanity wall and stop it before any surface that gets direct spray or standing water, such as a shower interior or tub surround. We set out the boundary in which bathroom zones metal tile is and isn't made for.

Decorative ceiling tiles reach the market from two industries that have almost nothing to do with each other. One sends a mineral fiber panel sized to drop into a metal grid and rest on its flanges. The other sends an embossed tile meant to be fixed to the ceiling you already have. What separates them is not the pattern on the face. "Ceiling tile" names two products with almost nothing in common One is a component. A lay-in panel is part of a suspension system: it exists to sit in a grid, be lifted out, and be put back. Its job description is written in performance numbers, and its face is the least considered thing about it. The other is a finish. A surface tile is bonded to the ceiling plane you already have, joists or drywall or plaster, and it is chosen the way you would choose a wallpaper: for how it looks from directly underneath. The clearest proof that the face is not the dividing line comes from the manufacturers. One pattern, pressed from the same die, gets sold in three separate fixings: a nail-up version edged to lap its neighbor and fastened through the lap, a version formed to screw down over drywall, and a drop-in version sized to sit in a grid. Same picture, three different panels: the face is shared, the dimensions and edges are not. What changes is what holds the tile up, and that is the question that reliably tells the two categories apart. The tell: grid tiles are made too small on purpose, surface tiles too big The detail that settles it sits in the specification table rather than the product copy. A "2x2" ceiling tile means two feet by two feet, so 24 inches square. Except that it is not 24 inches. Pull up the specification on almost any lay-in panel and you will find a listing reading something like Common: 24 in x 24 in; Actual: 23.75 in x 23.75 in. Published actual sizes run from roughly 23.65 to about 23.88 inches, varying by manufacturer and edge profile, so there is no single figure to memorize. The undersizing is deliberate, because the 24 inches is the grid module, the spacing of the metal bars measured center to center. The panel has to be small enough to tilt up diagonally through that opening and then drop back down onto the flanges of the bars, which is what actually carries its weight. Now look at a nail-up tile from the same catalog. It runs over 24 inches, in the region of 24 and three-eighths, with edges designed to lap the tile next to it. It is oversized for exactly the opposite reason: nothing is going to hold it at the perimeter, so it overlaps its neighbor and is fastened through the lap. Undersized means the grid carries it; oversized means the surface does. That one distinction resolves most ambiguous product listings. A footnote worth having: historic pressed metal plates, the material the trade still calls tin although it was tin-plated steel, were 24 inches square long before suspended ceilings existed. Both traditions reached the same module by different routes. What a drop ceiling is actually for A suspended ceiling is an access strategy before it is a look. The space above it, the plenum, carries ductwork, wiring and plumbing, and the grid turns every square foot of ceiling into a removable hatch. Damage one panel and you replace one panel. That access costs something. The system is engineered rather than decorative: suspension components are manufactured to ASTM C635 and installed to ASTM C636, and they are load-rated. It also takes headroom: because a panel must tilt up through its own opening, the grid hangs a few inches below the structure, commonly three to four, depending on the hardware. The grid has its own variables. Exposed bar faces come in more than one width, and lay-in panel edges are cut either square, to sit flat on the flange, or stepped, a tegular edge, to drop below it. Those belong to the grid system rather than to the pattern, so they sit outside this article. If your question is which fixing route a metal ceiling should take, our comparison of tin drop ceiling tiles, nail-up and peel-and-stick is the one to read. NRC, CAC and Class A: whose vocabulary this is Shop the functional category for five minutes and you meet a wall of acronyms. They are worth knowing, because they are the reason those panels exist and because they get assumed onto products that never claimed them. NRC, Noise Reduction Coefficient, is an average of how much sound a material absorbs at four frequencies, tested to ASTM C423 and rounded to the nearest 0.05. It describes absorption inside a room: how much a space stops sounding like a swimming pool. CAC, Ceiling Attenuation Class, is a different measurement entirely, tested to ASTM E1414. It rates how well a ceiling system blocks sound traveling from one closed room to the next, over the wall and through the shared plenum. A panel can score well on one and poorly on the other. Class A comes from the ASTM E84 surface burning test and covers two numbers: flame spread across a material's face, 0 to 25, and smoke developed, 0 to 450. It is not an hourly fire-resistance rating for a floor or ceiling assembly, and the two are often confused. Light reflectance is measured on any face, but the high figures quoted in ceiling marketing come from white or near-white panels. A colored or patterned face reads lower, so never carry a white panel's number across to a decorative one. The decorative side is less tidy than either camp's marketing suggests. Some decorative panels do publish a fire rating; acoustic data is commonly absent altogether. Sag resistance, the failure that decides whether a ceiling still looks flat in five years, has no single industry number behind it, and is usually communicated through a maker's own performance tiers or warranty conditions rather than a rating you can compare across brands. Read the specification sheet, and never infer a rating from the material. Why decorative ceiling tiles are so easy to get wrong The confusion is not the shopper's fault; it is built into how the category is sold. Product names routinely carry both fixings at once, so one listing can call itself a drop ceiling tile and a glue-up panel in the same breath. Decorative lay-in panels are also completely real, including molded coffer and pressed-look panels made by mainstream ceiling brands for their own grids, so the rule can never be "decorative tiles don't go in grids." Only one question survives contact with a real product listing. Not what it is made of, and not what it looks like, but what holds it up. Where a peel-and-stick 8x8 metal tile sits Our own tiles sit firmly on the finish side of that line. A WallWear tile is real water-resistant aluminum, 8 inches square, ten to a pack covering approximately 4.44 square feet. It is carried by the surface it is stuck to, which is why the condition of that surface decides the result. Installation is peel, stick, and trim to fit with a box cutter or scissors: no grout, no special tools, no professional help. The method itself is set out in our guide to installing peel-and-stick metal tile. It is not a grid product, and the arithmetic shows why. Three 8-inch tiles laid edge to edge measure exactly 24 inches, the nominal module, but not the actual opening, which is smaller. A lay-in panel is held at its perimeter by the bar flanges, so a tile sitting partway across an opening would have nothing under it. Ceilings are a use we list for these tiles, but as a surface they are bonded to, never as a drop-in. Worth stating directly: we publish no ceiling-specific weight limit, maximum tile weight or adhesive shear figure for these tiles, and adhesive-backed tile listings rarely carry those numbers at all. If your ceiling is anything other than sound and smooth, ask before committing a whole plane to it. On material, our notes on what "faux tin" is actually made of carry the rest. On whether a large pressed sheet or an 8-inch module suits your room, see how panels compare with 8-inch tiles. Whether you land on the warm weathered copper of Patina Copper, the pale relief of Pastel Painted Gold or the polished silver of Silver Fleur, you are choosing a face. That is the whole point of the decorative category. Choose it knowing which of the two products you are holding. Frequently Asked Questions Does a 2x2 ceiling tile mean feet or inches? Feet. A 2x2 ceiling tile is nominally two feet by two feet, so 24 inches square, and 2x4 means 24 by 48 inches. Those are the two standard grid modules used in the United States. The number describes the spacing of the suspension grid rather than the physical panel, which is manufactured slightly smaller. Why is a 24-inch ceiling tile actually smaller than 24 inches? Because it has to clear the grid on the way in. The panel is tilted up through its own opening and then set down on the flanges of the bars, so a true 24 inches would jam. Each manufacturer chooses its own undercut, which is why published actual sizes range from about 23.65 to 23.88 inches. The undersizing itself is the signal that a tile belongs to a grid. What is the difference between a drop ceiling and a surface-mount ceiling? A drop ceiling carries its panels on a suspended metal grid; a surface-mount ceiling carries them on the plane you already have. The reliable test is the tile itself. A lay-in panel is made under its nominal size so it can pass through the opening and rest on the flanges, while a surface tile is oversized to lap its neighbor. Measure the tile, not the pattern. Can you put decorative tiles into an existing drop ceiling grid? Only if they are made as lay-in panels. Several mainstream ceiling manufacturers sell genuinely decorative panels cut for their own grids, so the answer is not automatically no. Surface tiles, including glue-up, nail-up and peel-and-stick products, are not made to that dimension and are not carried at the perimeter, so they cannot simply be dropped in. Do decorative ceiling tiles have acoustic ratings? Usually they are not published, because decorative tiles are sold on their face rather than on performance. Some do carry a Class A surface burning rating, and a few publish NRC figures. Never assume a rating from the material a tile is made from: read the specification sheet for that individual product, or ask the manufacturer directly.