Mosaic

Mosaic is small tesserae — stone, glass, ceramic, porcelain or metal — mounted on a backing sheet so they can be installed as a unit rather than piece by piece. The sheet is the product; the individual piece is not.

That format is why mosaic goes where slab cannot. A sheet flexes over a curve, follows a shower fall, and turns a corner in a way a rigid slab never will.

Where it performs

• Shower floors, where the density of grout joints does the slip-resistance work
• Backsplashes and splashbacks
• Pool and spa linings
• Feature walls, niches and curved surfaces
• Borders and inserts against a larger-format field

What to watch

• **Grout is not a detail here, it is a design decision.** A mosaic has more grout per square foot than any other format, so grout colour changes the finished appearance more than the tile does. Specify it, and view it wet.
• **Sheet joints telegraph if the setter is careless.** The spacing between sheets has to match the spacing within them or the grid reads as a series of squares. This is an installation-quality question worth raising before it is a defect.
• Backing matters. Mesh-backed sheets are the common case; paper-faced sheets are set face-down and the paper is removed after. They are not interchangeable and the setter needs to know which is arriving.
• Some mosaics mix materials on one sheet — stone with glass, or stone with metal — and the mixed pieces will not all tolerate the same cleaners.

Finishes

Follows the material of the tesserae. Stone mosaics come polished, honed or tumbled; glass is glossy or frosted; metal is brushed or polished. A single sheet may combine several deliberately.

Thickness

Thin relative to slab, typically well under a centimetre plus the backing, so the setting bed carries the level. Where a mosaic meets a thicker adjacent material, that transition needs detailing rather than assuming.