What is terrazzo and where do you find it?

Essentially beginning as a way to use old offcuts of natural stone materials such as marble, quartz and granite, the 600-year-old technique of creating terrazzo surfaces is enjoying a particularly strong moment in today’s reuse culture. But sustainability isn’t the only calling card terrazzo has.

The features that really put the manufactured composite material at the top of many designers’ wish lists, are its mixture of hardwearing durability, crack-free water resistance and a near endlessly customisable palette of colour and pattern. And although the use of terrazzo originates, as the name suggests, from floor-level surfacing, it also lends itself perfectly to other surfaces and even products, too.

With the Latin word for earth (terra) giving terrazzo its name, the material has a long and illustrious history with flooring. While it can be poured and cast on-site to fill any size and shape of surface area, as the cement binding the stone pieces together can expand and contract as it dries, the larger the area, the more susceptible it is to cracking. This means large flooring solutions are often separated with metal inserts or installed in the form of pre-cast tiles like Palladiana tiles from Karoistanbul.

The strikingly chunky pieces seen in the Palladiana range make a heavy initial impact on a floor’s aesthetic, making the tiles a perfect solution for hospitality spaces. At the Annnd Cafe by Ruhaus Studio, for example, the large pieces of discarded green marble in the terrazzo floor were smashed by hand on-site. With the speckled effect created by smaller pieces, meanwhile – such as in the terrazzo flooring at the LH135 Offices Restoration by MARIANO – the subtle pattern can add depth to interiors. When combined with more impactful colours on the LH135 offices ceilings, the terrazzo floor stops the workplace from feeling blocky and two-dimensional.

Due to the opportunity for customisation in the shape, size and especially the colour of its constituent parts, the terrazzo pattern is one that deserves to get noticed on surfaces all over interiors, not just down on the floor. Yellow and turquoise emerge from the terrazzo surfaces in the kitchen and bathroom of House P, by MDDM Studio, for example, to echo the colour accents around the home. And even in spaces where a more subtle, reserved palette is in place like the pastel blue and natural wood at the Ne-On Apartment by NestSpace Design, terrazzo surfaces can tie them all together.

Due to its durability, combined with a smooth, crack-free formation, terrazzo is a highly functional and ultra-hygienic surface solution for kitchen worktops as in the two projects above, but the ability to be poured into a mould means the material also has a sculptural quality that’s perfect for integrated kitchen sinks too, such as in the First House by HANGHAR.

These functional, customisable and decorative features of terrazzo make it a useful material for designers to specify for interiors, but the same features also make it a popular material for product designers, too. The long-lasting durability of waterproof terrazzo, combined with the monotone aesthetic that’s possible with the mosaic-like pattern, make Urbi et Orbi’s wall-hung Balcony washstand a possibility. And Mambo Unlimited Ideas make extremely good use of terrazzo’s ability to tie colour palettes together, combining the dark blues and blacks of its lighting pendants’ steel structure with the warm yellow hue of its rattan pattern and the soft white of the light itself, all with an accompanying geometric piece of terrazzo.

The popularity of terrazzo as a pattern as well as a material means it’s consistently covered by imitating surface solutions as well. Along with extending terrazzo’s reach, PVC-free and washable wallpapers like the impact-resistant Terrazzo Bleu from Isidore Leroy or the PET-recycled and acoustic Terrazzo from WallPepper introduce terrazzo to more environments. When added to projects with vinyl tiles, meanwhile, terrazzo floors can be fast and simple to apply. The busy terrazzo pattern of Amtico’s Spacia range, for example, makes it difficult to see the lines in between the installed tiles, helping to give a smoother, more realistic finish.

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