If you’re an editor or trade journalist covering the tile, design or materials industry, there is a good chance you know Ryan Fasan. If you’re an architect or a materials curator for a big firm, there is a strong possibility that you have taken one of CEU classes about tile.

That’s because Ryan is one of the top tile guys in the industry. The Vancouver-based tile guru runs his own specialty construction company providing custom tile solutions in Canada. He is also a tile designer, having worked as a creative director for the now-defunct Bellavita Tile brand.
A trainer in the United States and Canada, Ryan is also the Technical Consultant for Tile of Spain, the international brand representing 125 ceramic tile manufacturers belonging to the Spanish Ceramic Tile Manufacturers’ Association. In this role, he holds trend seminars for journalists and technical specification seminars for architects and designers.

In addition to creating and delivering seminars, Ryan is a member of ANSI/ISO working groups with the CSC (Canadian Standards Council) along with being a technical committee member of Qualicer – World Congress on Ceramic Quality.

In short, if you want to know what’s happening in the world of ceramic tile and stone, there are few people better to call than Fasan.

Design Vibes sat down for a wide-ranging chat with the designer and installer to talk about his life story and to get his take on tile trends. The conversation has been edited to length.

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Design Vibes: How did you get into the tile business?

Ryan Fasan: Mine’s a story like many in this industry: it’s my family’s fault. My father was a practicing architect and partner in a major firm while my mother worked in a tile distributor as the sales director. As an only kid with two busy professional parents, child-care often consisted of coming into the office with them and learning new things from their staff. In my tweens, this became even more standard for school breaks etc. When I was twelve, my mom was just starting a dealer program for smaller retailers across Canada and that required thousands of grouted sample boards for their wing-racks. That summer I trained with one of the owner’s family and learned how to cut tile and then set to work. I quickly realized how much I loved working with my hands and found working with the medium of ceramics challenging and rewarding. I really wanted to see how the knowledge I learned in making small, grouted panels translated to larger installations, so I began to assist and eventually take over the role of creating the showroom vignettes. In my mid-teens as work became more important, I started working in the warehouse when there were no sampling projects required. Right from the beginning there was something I just loved about ceramic tile and found working with it in multiple ways across my 32-year career deeply rewarding.

DV: What was your progression from, I’m assuming, helper to installer to designer to educator?

RF: After all my time in the warehouse getting to know the trades, I always worked the contractor desk from 6:30- 9:00 am to ensure the trades had a familiar and relatable face on the desk during their busy mornings. Eventually, one of them asked me if I’d like to work professionally installing. I’d learned about as much as I could at that point and really loved my installation work in the showroom vignettes so I thought that would be a good next step to start forging my own path. The company I landed with had a father/son team of German immigrants that both had masters training in Germany in masonry, tile fixing and in the father’s case, engineering – so I thought that would be a great place to start my installation career. I worked with that crew for three years, learning in the old way starting with mixing medium bed mortar by hand in a wheelbarrow for days before I was told there was a stand mixer. My first 18 months consisted of doing prep work, mixing mortar and thinset for the setters, grouting and doing cuts. After all that time working alongside experienced setters, I’d absorbed so much valuable info on how to solve problems and set up a site for success, it was an easy transition to running my own sites for them. I moved east and spent four years away from the industry while my wife was in university – footing the bills working as a high-frequency trader by day and bartender & server by night in Toronto. It was about that time that my mother left the distributor to start an education company, teaching design professionals and sales teams how to better understand and optimize their use of tile in their projects – more on this later. When we moved back to Vancouver, I had the itch to get back into the world of ceramics. An old colleague of mom’s was just starting out his own fledgling boutique tile manufacturer and, knowing my installation work at the distributor, asked me to make his displays for his first Coverings booth. I did that as a side hustle for a couple years while running the tile division of a distributor’s new kitchen and bath design showroom. Eventually, he asked me to continue with the booth production seasonally but to join him full time as his master-spec rep, travelling across the United States and Canada, working with triple-A design firms as a hard-surface specialist to work specifications in large commercial and custom multi-family residential projects. What I really loved about that business though was the product development. He would research manufacturers and find out their specialty, develop products to harness their unique specialties and then lease production time to run those lines under his brand. Due to my work in building the tradeshow booths, I was always tapped to consult in the product development decisions. Eventually, I had to confess that although I was talented at sales, that work in product development consultation had become much more important for me than closing a sale. Fortunately, the company had grown to a point that they really needed a dedicated marketing professional who could also work on product development. So, I spent the next 8 years travelling to our production partners across Asia and developing new production opportunities in the USA and Europe developing new products for our retail brand and eventually multiple large OEM programs for companies like Daltile and Florida Tile to name a few. At peak, I ran 11 production teams on 3 continents producing over 60 collections for the company. Concurrently, I re-branded the company, took on web-development and social media for the brand and created a production facility in our Dallas DC for point-of sale marketing programs (displays, sample boards, architectural binders and grouted panels) along with training and managing the marketing production team. While all that was going on, Mom had been looking for a way to retire and hand her educational company off to a good steward and had worked with quite a few protégées but never finding the right fit. Despite all I had going on, she asked me to give educational speaking a try since I was already helping her creating graphics for her slide decks. So, in 2006, I started shadowing her on some trips and doing some joint-presenting and to my surprise, found I really liked it. With my broad experience including production and installation (two fields she had no first-hand knowledge of) I found a unique voice and perspective on educating. In 2009, I took the reins completely allowing mom to retire and that became the new side hustle. Sadly, in 2018, Trump‘s white house and the Tile Council of North America hit ceramics from China with punitive anti-dumping tariffs. Material produced in China accounted for more than half of our collections from the brand I was creative director of – over 300% tariffs effectively making over 7 million dollars of inventory in our Dallas DC non-replenishable and therefore worthless overnight. Just like that over a decade with that company was done as the company was forced into receivership. After making it through the pandemic, my family decided they had enough of me being out of the country for 2 weeks of every month and I decided that my hands were craving crafting, so I started a company with my best friend, a master carpenter and we have been building custom homes and doing craftsmen renovations in Vancouver together since 2021. I continue to educate the industry, largely on behalf of Tile of Spain, to this day.

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DV: In your time in the tile business, how has the tile industry changed?

RF: Since 1992, it’s changed a lot! But one of the things I love about ceramics is that no matter how much it changes, at its core, ceramics are still the same clay, sand and feldspar that have been exposed to heat as the Egyptians were making in circa 4000 BC. When I was starting in the industry, roto-color printing (large moving drum screen printers) was in its heyday making stone looks and other natural-variation collections more realistic and engaging than they’d ever been. I have to say there are some iconic programs from that time that are still some of my favorites to this day. The biggest revolution that was happening right as I got started was the first rectified collection debuted by Venis in their iMarmi collection. At first it was a bit of a laughingstock for much of the industry because it was 40% more expensive than any other marble-look program, but as we know today – Porcelanosa Grupo once again proved their prescience in knowing what the market wants and apparently, we wanted true, square edges on organic and stone-look programs. I’ve seen the standard sizes transition from 12-inch-by-12-inch or 13-inch-by-13-inch of the 90’s to the ubiquitous 12×24-inch and 18×18-inch of the twenty-aughts to modern day’s standards of 24×48-inch and 39×39-inch. Jumps in scale necessitated a concurrent jump in technology for installation tools. We’ve seen the rise of edge-control clips, a host of underlayments and boarding options along with a huge array of user-friendly performance mortars and adhesives.

DV: Europe, specifically Spain and Italy, are considered the center of the tile universe when it comes to design, innovation and technical know-how. What is it about those places and quality tile?

RF: I think there’s a lot of things that go into this being the truth. First, it is the national mindset and upbringing. Like I do when researching trends, you have to look at a broad spectrum of things outside the industry to determine the playing field and rules that govern the game. Western Europe has had a passion for craftsmanship and simple respect of ingredients, letting their soul shine through. Look at the cuisines in those countries – minimal ingredients, touched with care and as minimally as possible to let the food sing with craftsmanship and seasonal optimization. I think this mindset is captured perfectly by another western European, albeit of French descent, Antoine De Saint-Exupéry: “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” Another key component of the answer here is that much like my story, most of the predominant brands from these regions are family companies with generations teaching their mindset and skill set to their scions from the time they were at apron strings. Finally, each country chose to specialize in a precursor industry that leads the innovation cycle in the end-product. In Italy it is production machinery, making most of the top-quality presses, kilns and other production machinery for the global industry and in Spain it’s glazes and frits supplying them to the world at large. Having these industries in their backyard means their local manufacturers benefit through symbiotic development relationships and operating as test facilities in production environments before global export launches. The reputation that comes from decades of this expertise is also a big part of the equation. People have learned to expect the best to come from there, so it takes a big force to shift those perceptions.

DV: What’s the quality of tile across the industry–not just Europe?

RF: There are quality tiles produced everywhere in the world. As I mentioned, I ran product development for a major player in tile for over a decade and we produced top quality tile with ISO 4001 environmental certification and exceeding ANSI and ISO standards for our own and other established brands in the USA, Malaysia, Vietnam, China, India, Spain and Italy. That’s just one company but in my time in product development and more importantly capabilities studies around the world looking for new factories to work with, I discovered quality mindset and production teams all over the place. In some countries, they may be harder to find among the dross, but there are always people wired up in a way that makes producing junk an impossibility for them. A country of origin is not a good primary indicator of quality. In my experience, complacency and a company ethos driven by capitalistic goals to the exclusion of all else is what kills quality and innovation. In the main, the bar for quality has gotten higher across the industry as lower-cost commodity products like luxury vinyl tile have come to market. Whether good quality or not, tile is a premium choice that comes with a premium price-point for both product and installation. The market is shifting in a way that is forcing a higher baseline for quality and design in ceramics to be appealing to the modern consumer.

DV: With so many tile brands and so many price points, how should a consumer/DIYer assess products? What are the considerations?

RF: Sorry but I have to start with a caveat. I will say that DIY’ers should be hesitant to take on most tile projects. Or at least start with the right ones before tackling bigger/tougher ones. Here’s where I’d suggest starting: Backsplash or other wall installation where water isn’t a factor. I say this for a few reasons:

• The areas are small, so errors don’t compound as much. If one of your joints is off by 1/16 of an inch that issue compounds and gets bigger the farther away from the source you get. Over 10 feet to 20 feet (the average run of a kitchen) or 18 inches (the average height of a backsplash) that error compounds at a far more manageable rate than a full shower enclosure or worse, kitchen/family room floor.
• Water is the bane of construction and there’s a lot of prep that needs to be done perfectly and knowledge in the right products to use is required in a wet area. Getting something wrong on a backsplash might be a little expensive to fix, but you won’t end up with a black mold problem and potential structural issues.
• You can get away with less dangerous and costly tools with smaller format tiles and smaller areas to do. Tiling is hard and without instruction, some of the tools we use on a daily basis can be incredibly dangerous. For example, my business partner is a master carpenter who uses a circular saw like an extension of his arm but my 4.5-inch angle grinder scares the panties off him! A small, inexpensive snap cutter and drill with a fine masonry bit can handle much of what you’ll need for a backsplash keeping both cost and hazards down.
• Floors are tricky because you must think about substrate deflection, flatness and a host of other things. Mortar coverage is always critical but floors undergo much more stress than walls so I’d get a couple dry-area wall projects under your belt before trying to tackle a floor.

Ok, with that out of the way, there are a few things I would say to an end user hoping to demystify the industry and process of selecting tile.

• Go to a specialty retailer or even better, a distributor, to speak with a rep. Big box stores do not have specialty staff who understand the nuances of the industry. The former do, and often get PK (product knowledge) sessions from manufacturer reps on the nuances of the key benefits of their material.
• Find a good installer. They can answer a lot of the questions about quality and selection–differently and definitely more practically if not better–than a lot of salespeople. Looking at the certified installers (TCNA in USA or TTMAC in Canada) is a great place to start.
• Ask for an ANSI or ISO datasheet on the collection. Even if you don’t know what everything on it means, if you can’t easily find one yourself or have it produced by your salesperson, there’s a good chance it’s not a quality-conscious manufacturer.
• Get a box of the material and some spacers the size you want your joints and dry lay them to check consistency yourself. Check for squareness, flatness and sizing consistency to ensure your planned installation/pattern will work with the material. If you put the tiles back in the carton and tape it back up, most retailers will allow returns with a 20% restocking fee and a few bucks in fees and a bag of spacers is a lot cheaper and easier than trying to work with shoddy products when the job is underway.

DV: What about specifiers, designers and architects–What are their considerations for picking the right tile?

RF: Woof! That’s a huge question. Totally depends on the area and degree of intended traffic. I literally have full-day intensive sessions for design and sales teams on this topic, but I’ll try to give a few key pointers for areas I often see things going wrong.

• Tile measurements are in metric. Period. Regardless of whether you work in imperial measurements and your showroom tells you the tile you’re specing is 24-inch-by-48-inch that is a nominal measurement. It’s the same as me saying “as the Egyptians were making in circa 4000 BC” in my answer to question three above. Circa means approximate or nominally. That 24-inch-by-48-inch is actually 1198mm x 2309mm or whatever the manufacturer has their standard dies set to in metric. I can’t tell you how many sets of painfully detailed plans and elevations I’ve gotten from designers that were done in imperial and just don’t work because the true metric measurements were not used. Secondary to that is calculating for the inherent joint in a tile matrix. Again, use metric – if you want a 1/16-inch joint, add 2mm to the vertical and horizontal dimension of the tile in your specs to make sure your CAD/Revit file work translates to the jobsite. To take the guess-work out a lot of top manufacturers are providing BIM files for their collections to make importing to design software easy.
• Further to above, if you’re using multiple formats (like a Versailles pattern) or orientations (like herringbone) modularity is key. That means the manufacturer has taken the time and done the math to incorporate the inherent joint in the different sizes or facial dimensions of their collection. If they have, their literature will publish a recommended joint-width. It IS necessary to use this recommended joint-width if you want your pattern to work out.
• Mockups! If you want certain trim details, prep details done correctly on site, especially if you’re working with a big installation crew, pay the day rate for your installation team to make mockups of critical areas and get them on site for the setter’s reference. The number of costly issues and change orders this can save is mind-blowing.
• Don’t default to specifying porcelain for everything simply because you can’t be bothered to understand if a lower density product can meet the technical demands of your specification. I see a lot of designers and especially architects just using porcelain for everything. Yes, it does work in 99 percent of cases, but you’re needlessly limiting your options and increasing your installation budgets. For example, when I’m quoting a shower with walls in porcelain, I don’t change my square-foot or hourly rates but there are add-ons: in materials for more expensive mortars; diamond blades for grinder or saw; and coring bits for every size of pipe or fixture that I need for the shower and in most cases these days that’s at least three sizes of coring bits at $40 to 150 each. This generally adds at least $400 to a wall installation in porcelain.

DV: There are many, many tile designs out there, so when you’re designing, how do you come up with something unique?

RF: To be honest, a lot of it is looking back for inspiration. Design is a time-capsule. A creative will come up with an idea based on their worldview and creative inputs and set out to realize that vision with the skills and technology at their disposal. As technology progresses, the vision doesn’t change but the capabilities to realize that vision in wholly unique ways does. Often, I will look at previous concepts of my own or other designers throughout history and ask myself, “what is the design goal and what constraints forced compromise? Is there anything now that mitigates that compromise and allows for a purer expression of that design goal?” I am always asking myself, “What more can I take away without losing the design goal?” Sometimes technology can help with that and sometimes a designer gets so enamored with a new capability they are looking for a way to use it and the result feels forced. I think success in product development relies on relatability. If I can refine a concept so that a user or viewer can relate my concept in one simple sentence, I have come up with something worthwhile. If I can do that and multiple people come up with a diversity of simple sentences unique to their perspective, then it is something truly special. Like I mentioned earlier, I start my trend research looking at everything that has nothing to do with tile: vacation locales and experiential trends, film and cinema eras and themes, New York Times best sellers, fashion trends and Google Search terms. The purpose of this process is to sift out the macro trends that jump interests and demographics allowing for idea/perspective reinforcement and trend growth driving shifts across multiple industries.

DV: What are the three hottest trends in the industry right now?

RF: I think the manufacturers that are really doing things right are all doing a few key things within their own unique design language:

• Looking for ways to use digital decoration to create more natural spontaneity in products is key. If we look at master painters or any other creative field where individuals have become household names, it is when a leap of understanding has created an atmosphere where green grass is not just colored green. Sure, there’s green in there, but there’s also a host of other colors and variance in reflectivity. If you don’t get what I’m saying, put this article down, go take a picture of your lawn and then use something like photoshop to zoom into a pixel level. You’ll see a plethora of colors in those pixels created by variance in the tone of green itself but also texture and reflectivity. The same is true in tile today. Manufacturers that are really succeeding are the ones that are taking digital decoration to truly natural levels, whether they are creating reconstructions of nature (like stone or wood) or something purely ceramic.
• That leads right into the re-defining of Biophilia. We all became familiar with that term during the pandemic and the first definition was pretty basic and literal. We missed nature and discovered its vital importance to our psyche, so we created a bunch of natural motifs of flowers and vegetation and used a lot of green to replace the nature missing from our existence. Today, manufacturers are taking a more relational approach – what I’m calling Biophilic-Resonance. Instead of printing pictures of nature they are using colors and natural-inspired variability to create programs that coordinate with and support the integration of nature in special design. With more vegetation becoming an integral part of design today, the materials and finishes surrounding it have to contain a similar degree of reflective variance and color modulation to have coherence and I’m seeing a lot more of that in progressive tile collections.
• Slab. Large format with varying thicknesses for different use-cases–such as worktop, veneers and pavers–are creating a huge stir in furniture, cabinetry as well as traditional tile installations. Having a lifetime, heirloom piece of furniture or cabinetry to go with your generational investment property really speaks to clients today. It’s a huge growth area and something savvy designers would do well to add to their arsenal.