What’s The Fuss about the Cersaie International Tile Fair??
Cersaie is the most important ceramic tile fair in the world. Essentially, Fashion Week for tiles. It is held annually in Bologna, Italy and 2021 marked the 38th event.
Universal Display by Tuscania at Cersaie 2021. All 4 designs are currently stocked at The Tile Depot.
Cersaie showcases the latest and forecast international trends and product developments, for the ceramic tiling and bathroom design industry. It’s usually a massive event with hundreds of exhibits from manufacturers from all over the world. It usually has over 100,000 visitors, 50% of which are international guests from outside of Italy.
Tile Depot representatives have attended Cersaie on occasion, and been blown away by the scale and quality of the event. Oftentimes getting way too excited and ordering far more product than they possibly should. (Which is why they don’t get to go as often as they’d like).
Cersaie 2020 was unfortunately cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic but Cersaie 2021 went ahead last September, with both physical and virtual attendance.
With a vast array of product designs on show, oftentimes it can be hard to determine if there is a dominant trend amongst the displays. At Cersaie 2021 though, it would be fair to say there was an abundance of colour and pattern, with a real emphasis on replacing traditional wallpaper with ceramic tiles. The ceramic “wallpapers” on display were bold and colourful, often featuring glamorous botanical and jungle designs, and vibrant geometric patterns. Designs that spoke of opulence and energy that would invigorate any space. The majority of which appeared to be large format tiles.
The GLAM collection, already stocked at The Tile Depot and perfectly typify the overwhelming trend for wall coverings at Cersaie 2021. Featuring Glam Hedge.
From perusing the images of the 2021 displays, it also appeared that there was also an abundance of stone-inspired porcelain designs. In a wide array of sizes and shapes but again trending towards larger formats. Woodgrain porcelain was still there but to a lesser extent than previous years, and instead of being committed to realistic re-creations of natural planks of wood (which were still prominent), this year they appeared to have a lot more interesting treatments of the wood designs such as aged or parquet effects, hybrid designs and many wood porcelain planks had decorative inlay options. Ornate decorative feature tiles certainly were prominent throughout many collections at the fair.
Glam Greenwall with stone-effect tiles which were also promiment at the fair in 2021. Stone-effect porcelain is always popular and is a stapel design genre for most manufacturers.
Earthy natural colours were also a feature of smaller, simpler tile designs which were apparent in smooth high gloss geometric forms and more rough-hewn tiles reminiscent of handmade products. It was great to see that in all these areas, the Tile Depot has lines already in stock and on order that were consistent with the tile fair designs.
Argile collection from Equipe, due to arrive at The Tile Depot in April 2022 in the square formats. Typical earthy colours that will define 2022.
So what’s the fuss? For the Tile Depot, it exposes us to the latest product technologies and designs so that we can ensure that the our HQ is stocked with the most current products that are hitting the global markets. It also helps us to anticipate trend changes so that when the NZ market is ready, the tiles are here. When you’re as passionate about tiles as we are, there is nothing more exciting than seeing new designs and innovations and adding them to our forever evolving range.
Cersaie 2021, reaffirmed the Tile Depot's collection for 2022 is right on turned with the international market. In the past NZ may have been a year or two behind the european market, but that's certainly not the case any longer. Check out our 2021/22 Lookbook for some of our favourite tile collections.