Who said size doesn't matter? FAP Ceramiche goes large

Big personalities tend to leave larger and longer-lasting impressions on others. People flock towards them, hoping to be brightened and entertained. They give any situation an exciting atmosphere and fail to go unnoticed, especially when absent. The interiors version of a big personality is a seriously instagrammable feature wall, bringing a room together by setting itself apart. With few limits to colour, print and texture, most feature walls are created with paint or wallpaper. But these materials tend to fade, peel or crack quickly.

Italian brand FAP Ceramiche, meanwhile, work with ceramic material. Specialising in 3D textured tiles, inspiration comes from looking back, researching ancient craft techniques, while simultaneously looking forward, creating new techniques through experimentation. FAP designers take time to play with the clay, adding a new dimension of emotion to ceramics. Unlike paint and wallpaper, ceramics are fully recyclable, non-toxic, stain proof, fire-safe, hygienic, naturally sound-absorbing and insulating. FAP uses this wonder material to transform bathrooms into large-scale walk-in artworks.

While a good material for feature walls, however, smaller scale ceramic tiles are time consuming to install and patterns can seem repetitive over larger areas, but FAP’s latest release makes a big impression on interiors.

Bloom is a collection of super-sized (80x160cm) white-body wall tiles. As well as a deeper, more vibrant colour, white-body tiles are lighter and easier to cut, therefore easier to handle and apply. Meaning the large tile doesn’t have to be a large problem.

Due to a finer grain of clay, white-body tiles can be rectified so the colour runs right to the end of a sharper edge. Rectified tiles can be laid without joints to give a seamless finish across an entire wall.

Feature walls in bathrooms are usually limited to gradually fading paint or simply a different colour of the same tile, but just like when wallpaper printing pasted over the class divides and brought artwork to everyone, Bloom’s various designs use seamless joints to open up a well of possibilities for more creative bathrooms with a bigger personality.

If the size of the room can handle a really BIG personality, Bloom’s Inserto sets are 160x240cm artworks, set across three tiles. The distinctive designs include Dandelion, a striking floral decorative feature; Jungle, an exotic ant’s-eye-view of nature; Delavé, an abstract sunset for cosy meditation and Rose, whose two-tone lustre brings its unassuming florals to life. These Inserto sets can become focal points set alongside complementary colours or multiple sets can create one continuous, infinite image across the length of the entire wall.

Alternatively, if the room requires a relaxed personality to present a more peaceful, calming aura, Bloom includes three 3D textured designs, immune to changing trends. The expressive and emotive Star design is a delicate network of rippled paper, folded seemingly at random. While the unstructured formation of Print gives walls a light feeling like embroidered lace. Tickling the tactile senses, both textured tiles, along with the glittering Metal series with its accents of silver and gold, play with light and shadow, adding depth and character to the wall.

When you think about textured relief tiles, it’s easy to think of small scale patterns repeated and repeated... and repeated. But with seamless joints on such a large tile, it’s next to impossible to find where the pattern starts and ends. Bloom’s Mosaico designs present these unstructured relief patterns within the confines of mosaic tiles. As each pattern has more space to differentiate before its forced to repeat again, the sculptural walls have a more natural form.

Of course, you don’t need to be loud and extravagant to have an engaging, entertaining personality, sometimes the most enjoyable people to be around give you a warm, comforting feeling without saying anything at all. The same can be said for Bloom’s concrete-effect tiles, combining smooth, calming base colours of white, grey and beige with complementary accents of blue and brown. The ceramic tiles create a lusciously rich depth of colour you could dive right into. Just be careful you don’t get lost in Bloom Blue’s bottomless eyes.

Whatever your idea of a feature wall, be it a big, bold artwork; the glint of glamorous gold or silver; a structured mosaic; subtle, light-playing texture or rich, complementary colour, Bloom provides unrestricted creativity, reaching the places wallpaper cannot.

© Architonic