Terrazzo against marble, against concrete, against porcelain, and against its own cheaper versions.
6 questions in this harvest fall under this subject. 9 answered so far.
No. Porcelain terrazzo is a fired clay tile with a printed surface. The aggregate you can see is in the glaze, at a fixed depth, and there is none beneath it. It costs a fraction of cement terrazzo and it behaves differently, which is fine — as long as a specification does not call it terrazzo.
Terrazzo is harder and will not etch; marble is softer, looks better close up, and etches on contact with anything acidic. Terrazzo is more uniform because it is engineered; marble varies slab to slab, which is either its appeal or its problem. Neither is better — they answer different requirements.
GB/T 35157, and the important part is what it did NOT cover. The 2017 version carried the word resin in its own title and it standardised resin products only; cement-based material had no national standard to point at. The revision, plan no. 20253872-T-609, renames it "engineered stone slabs" and brings cement-based material in for the first time. Until it issues, a resin product and a cement product do not carry the same paperwork.
Poured gives you a floor with no joints in it at all, ground flat with the slab, and that is the whole of its argument. Tile gives you a floor you can lift and replace one piece at a time. On a renovation, poured is usually not available at all.
Terrazzo is real stone chip set in cement and ground flat. Porcelain is a fired clay body with the chip pattern printed into the glaze. Turn the tile over: terrazzo shows the aggregate running through the body, porcelain shows uniform clay with the pattern only on the face. Porcelain needs no sealing and is cheaper; terrazzo can be re-ground when it dulls and porcelain cannot.
Turn it over. Real terrazzo shows the aggregate running through the body to the edge; a printed tile shows uniform clay with the pattern only on the face. Then lay six out on the floor: a printed surface has a finite number of faces, so a cluster of chips comes round again. Then press it: a printed glaze does not dent, and it does not chip at the edge when you set it.
Granite is harder and more heat-resistant, and it is a slab product so a scratch is a scratch on one piece. Terrazzo gives up a little hardness for two things granite cannot do: a floor with no joints in it, and a colour chosen by the client rather than by the quarry. For a kitchen worktop granite wins on heat; for a large floor terrazzo wins on the seam.
They are closer than most comparisons suggest, and the difference is in what the surface is made of. Quartz is crushed stone in a resin, uniform all the way through. Terrazzo is graded aggregate in a matrix, graded so the chips sit at different depths and the floor has a depth quartz does not. In a kitchen, quartz takes heat less well than granite; terrazzo etches less than marble. Neither wins outright.
They are close on thickness and far apart on what happens when the floor is damaged. Microcement is a thin coating that cannot be re-ground or patched to a match. Terrazzo is a graded aggregate floor that can. If the floor will be handled hard, that difference is worth more than the two surfaces looking similar on the day.
These are the phrasings people typed, not headings we invented. Where one has an answer the link is live; where it does not it is printed plain, and that is deliberate — a printed question with nothing behind it is an honest promise, and hiding it is not.
Ordered by how many questions each one holds.