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Slate is one of nature’s best sediments. Well, it’s a rock, but it’s a sedimentary rock, which gives it unique qualities that make it a great material for building things. Slate is popular as a roofing tile, but it’s also used quite often as a flooring tile.
Slate comes in a lot of varieties, but it’s formed out of clay and silt deposits. Nature takes these deposits and embeds them into shale. Mountains grow and compress the shale. While that’s happening, the intense heat from the earth’s interior changes the original materials into mica, quartz, and chlorite. All of this leads to a powerful metamorphosis that transforms the natural elements of planet earth into slate, which must then be extracted, cut, formed, and processed to be useful for building and construction purposes.
Because mountains play such a huge part in the formation of slate, that’s where you’ll find it. China, Spain, Africa, and other mountainous countries are rich in slate.
Several U.S. states are also rich in slate. For instance, Maine, Virginia, New York, Vermont, and Pennsylvania have rich deposits of slate that are often used for tile flooring. The color of the slate is dependent upon where it is formed and the minerals found in those locations. Virginia slate, for instance, tends to be high in mica and deep blue or black in color. New York and Vermont slates, on the other hand, have more red, purple, and green in them.
For more on slate tile as a flooring material, talk to an Éco Dépôt Céramique representative or visit our showroom.