The Moh’s scale uses ten fairly common minerals of known hardness and gives each of them a relative value of 1-10. To give the consumer a relative measurement of scratch resistance of tile and stone, manufacturers and suppliers use the Moh’s Hardness Scale. A tile passes if the value achieved is >0.42. Note that in some technical specification charts either “pass” or “fail” will be noted under the DCOF heading. Similarly, in entranceways, the use of entrance mats can accomplish the same. In the case of residential bathrooms, the common use of bathmats can accomplish this. Tiles with a lower value are not necessarily restricted to dry areas only, but rather are restricted to applications where they are kept dry when walked upon. As stated by the TCNA (Tile Council of North America) ANSI A137.1-2012 says that “ceramic tiles selected for level interior spaces expected to be walked upon must have a minimum wet DCOF AcuTest value of > 0.42.

The newer, consistent method, DCOF (Dynamic Coefficient Of Friction) AcuTest, is much more accurate and has only one value which is a measurement of when the tile is wet. The old method, called SCOF (Static Coefficient of Friction), had a dry value and a wet value where it was suggested that any wet value of >.60 was preferred. Therefore, you may find technical specifications using the old method as they had not been updated. The tile industry transitioned from a somewhat unreliable test method to a more accurate method of testing in 2012. This is often referred to as coefficient of friction (COF) and it refers to the relative slipperiness of a tile. This article is designed to help sort out the meanings of some of the more important technical properties that you will want to be aware of and will often be identified in the technical specification section. Both ANSI (American National Standards Institute) and ASTM International have developed standard testing methods and the results are often noted in the technical specification section.

The ceramic tile technical specification chart can often be a confusing set of codes and numbers but they are important pieces of information to understand when buying ceramic tile. When reading the different marketing literature pieces that accompany many ceramic tile products you’ll notice a section that is usually placed toward the back that is often referred to as “technical specifications”.

Graphite multispec on tile