Terracotta: the material I keep coming back to

There’s something about terracotta that keeps pulling me back to it, project after project. It has an earthiness and warmth that grounds a scheme almost instantly, plenty of texture without trying too hard, and unlike a lot of finishes that come and go, it never really dates. I’ve used it again and again across very different projects and each time it’s done something slightly different. Here’s a closer look at the material, and where I’ve personally put it to work.

What is terracotta, exactly?

Terracotta means ‘cooked earth’ in Italian, and it’s one of the oldest building materials there is. Fired clay objects date back roughly 5,000 years, with Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley and Neolithic China all independently turning to it for pottery, roof tiles, bricks and architectural ornament, largely because clay was the material everyone had to hand. The Greeks and Romans developed it further for temples and decorative work and in the 19th and 20th centuries, architectural terracotta was also used as cladding material (very popular on Victorian townhouses).

Technically speaking, terracotta is a coarse, iron-rich earthenware, fired at a relatively low temperature (around 1,000°C, compared with 1,200–1,450°C for porcelain) and usually left unglazed. That lower firing temperature is exactly what gives it its soft, slightly irregular, porous character. It’s also why it needs proper sealing wherever it will see water, and why it isn’t always the most practical choice (as I’ll explain later).

On walls and floors

In a residential setting, terracotta will most often be used as tiling, on walls and floors alike. At our Dowlas Street project in Peckham, the vanity wall was tiled in Claybrook’s Ema Terracotta Mosaic Tetto, a small-format mosaic with all the warmth and irregularity you want from a handmade clay tile, paired with teak joinery and bronze tapware for a properly grounded, spa-like feel.

Terracotta also featured heavily on our Lissenden Gardens kitchen project in Camden, where I specified tiles for the splashback from the same Claybrook range, this time in the Forno format, a slightly smaller mosaic which we installed horizontally. On the floor, we laid hexagonal porcelain tiles that imitate traditional terracotta. The hex shape worked extraordinarily well in this polygonal shaped room.

We colour-matched the socket plates to the terracotta tiles as an added personal touch

The hexagonal format worked really well in this 1960s inspired plywood kitchen

In hospitality, reimagined

Hospitality projects don’t always allow for genuine, soft-fired terracotta due to the space demanding tougher finishes. At Cántaro, our Mexican restaurant fit-out in Beckenham, I was so pleased to be the first one to use a newly launched terracotta collection by Plus Floor, who specialise in LVT (luxury vinyl tile). It gave us the warmth and colour we wanted underfoot, in a format that can stand up to a busy restaurant floor night after night.

We also used genuine terracotta blockwork at Cántaro, but structurally rather than decoratively: open block partitions were used to zone the room and define different seating areas, without the cost or permanence of solid walls. It’s a good example of how the same material can flex between ‘finish’ and ‘structure’ depending on what a project needs.

The terracotta wall blocking helped zone the different restaurant areas, adding privacy between tables

As structure, not just surface

That structural use of terracotta block went further at Woodbourne Avenue in Streatham Hill, where terracotta walling blocks were built up either side of a bench to form a feature wall, giving real depth and shadow that a flat tiled surface couldn’t achieve. Sourced as a building block, terracotta can be part of the architecture itself and the design options are endless. I used the Tally decorative bricks by Mutina for this project, delivered to site from Italy!

Terracotta added a lot of warmth in this tropical modernism inspired scheme

The imitation game

Not every terracotta application calls for the real thing, and there’s no shame in that. Genuine terracotta is porous, needs sealing, and can be more easily chipped or stained than other finishes, so on the bench seat itself at Woodbourne Avenue, I specified Claybrook’s Georgetown Brick Terracotta Effect Porcelain Tile. It reads as terracotta from across the room, but with the durability and low maintenance of porcelain on a surface that gets sat on, leaned against and generally lived with daily.

The natural variations of terracotta have been reproduced to perfection in these porcelain tiles by Claybrook

We took the same approach at Dowlas Street, where the main shower walls were tiled in a large-format plaster-effect porcelain, with the genuine mosaic kept to the vanity wall as an accent. It’s a pairing I’d recommend more often than people expect: let the real material do the talking somewhere small and tactile, and let a good imitation take the strain somewhere it will get wet, knocked or scrubbed every day.

Worth bearing in mind

A few things to consider if you’re tempted: unsealed or poorly sealed terracotta will stain, so factor in a sealant and a maintenance routine, especially in kitchens and bathrooms. Genuine terracotta tiles also vary tile to tile, that’s part of the appeal, but it’s worth seeing a full sample board rather than a single tile before committing. And you don’t need to choose between real and imitation: as the above projects all show, the two can sit happily side by side, each doing the job it’s best suited to.

Whether it’s a mosaic tile, a hexagonal floor, an LVT flooring or a solid block, terracotta has a way of making a space feel grounded and lived-in from day one. If you’re considering it for a project, or wondering whether the real thing or a good imitation makes more sense for your space, I’d love to help you work it out.

Contact me

Until next time,

Delphine