The 8-Step Marazzi Tile Order Checklist I Built After $28,000 in Mistakes

I handle tile orders for a design-build firm outside Chicago. Twelve years in, I've personally botched somewhere around $28,000 worth of product — wrong dye lots, wall tile ordered as floor tile, trim that showed up after the crew already did. The checklist below is what our junior PMs now have to run before any Marazzi order leaves the office.

It's eight steps. Takes about forty minutes the first time, ten after that. It's written for contractors, designers, and dealer reps ordering Marazzi floor tiles, wall tile, or a specific look like the Rice Bianco our clients keep asking for — and who'd rather not find out at install day.

Step 1: Lock the full spec, not the product name

"Marazzi Rice Bianco" isn't a spec. It's a starting point. Before anything gets priced, I need the SKU, the exact size, whether it's rectified or pressed, and the surface finish. Wall tile and floor tile are not interchangeable, and the naming doesn't always make that obvious.

In 2017 I ordered 320 square feet of what I thought were Marazzi floor tiles for a mudroom. Turned out I'd pulled the wall-tile SKU because the sample board and the catalog page used slightly different names. That one cost $1,200 in return freight and restocking, plus a two-week delay while the client's dog tracked mud across a bare subfloor. Now the rule is simple: the PO lists the SKU and size, never the marketing name alone.

While you're in there, confirm whether the series is rectified. It changes the grout joint you can get away with, which changes the whole look.

Step 2: Look at the sample under the actual room's light

Everything I'd read said a showroom sample and a job-site sample are close enough. In practice, they're not even the same color.

Rice Bianco in our showroom reads as a warm cream. Put the same tile in a north-facing kitchen with 2700K bulbs and it goes gray. Not defective — just physics. So we ship a physical sample to the site and leave it there for at least two days before the client signs off. According to USPS pricing effective January 2025, a Priority Mail Flat Rate Envelope runs $9.85 — cheaper than a single returned box of tile, and it gets there in two to three days. Source: usps.com.

Ask the client to look at it in the morning and again at night. If they still like it, you're covered.

Step 3: Measure substrate flatness before you blame the tile

This is the step almost everyone skips. Most lippage complaints aren't a tile problem — they're a wall or floor problem.

The TCNA Handbook and the ANSI A108.02 standard call for substrate flatness within 1/8 inch in 10 feet for large-format tile, and 1/4 inch in 10 feet for smaller formats. If your framer or concrete guy handed off something outside that, no amount of skill with a trowel fixes it. You either grind, float, or you pick a smaller tile.

We check with a 10-foot straightedge before the order goes in, not after the tile lands. It sounds backwards — measuring for flatness before you've bought the material — but it's the only time you can still change the tile size without eating a restocking fee.

Step 4: Order Schluter trim and corners in the same cart

The September 2022 disaster: 600 square feet of Marazzi floor tile arrived Tuesday. The Schluter trim was backordered and landed Friday. The crew stood around for three days at $600 a day in standby. That's $1,800 of nothing, because I treated trim as an afterthought instead of part of the order.

Trim has to match tile thickness. Schluter's SKU numbers — E 80, E 100, E 125 — are the profile height in millimeters, so a 10mm tile wants the E 100. Get that wrong and you're either shimming or reordering. Also count your outside corners and end caps separately; the straight lengths don't cover them, and nobody notices until the installer is standing at a doorway.

Trim ships from a different warehouse than the tile more often than you'd think. Same PO, same week, or you're gambling.

Step 5: Decide the grout joint width and grout type before install day

If the answer to "what joint width?" is "whatever the installer does," you've already lost control of the look. Rectified porcelain can usually take a 1/16-inch joint; pressed tile generally wants 1/8 inch or more to hide edge variation.

Then there's grout: cementitious versus epoxy. Epoxy costs more and takes longer to install, but for a kitchen floor or a shower it's usually worth it. I'm not 100% sure the price gap closes as much as some reps claim, but on the jobs where we've used it, the cleanup and stain resistance have held up.

Write the joint width and grout brand into the install scope. Vague scopes are how you end up with a 3/16-inch joint nobody approved.

Step 6: Settle quartz vs granite countertops first

This one is counterintuitive. Clients want to pick tile first because it's the fun decision. But if the countertop is still up in the air, the tile choice is floating.

Granite tends to run warm and busy. Quartz is usually cooler and more uniform. Rice Bianco next to a warm granite can look dingy; the same tile next to a cool white quartz looks intentional. We had a Q1 2024 client who changed her mind from granite to quartz two weeks after the tile shipped. The tile was fine — it just didn't read right against the new slab, and she wanted to redo 180 square feet of backsplash.

So the order of operations in our office is: countertop material locked, then tile selected, then trim, then grout. It's slower on the front end and much faster on the back end.

Step 7: Confirm stock and lead time within 48 hours of the PO

Had two hours to decide on a rush order last spring. Normally I'd wait for written stock confirmation, but the client needed an answer before a Friday walkthrough. I went with the rep's verbal "should be fine" based on nothing more than six years of working together.

Three of the five SKUs were short. We split the order, installed the main field first, and came back three weeks later for the shower walls. It worked, but only because the client was flexible. Most aren't.

Now the rule is written stock confirmation within 48 hours, even on rush jobs. If the rep can't confirm, we assume a four-week lead time and tell the client that number.

Step 8: Inspect and stage on arrival, by room

Open every box you can without breaking the pallet wrap. Check dye lot codes against the PO. Marazzi prints them on the carton, and mixed lots happen more than anyone wants to admit. Photograph the pallet before you sign the delivery receipt.

Then stage by room, not by SKU. Same-lot boxes go in the same corner, labeled with the room name. It sounds fussy until the second installer grabs a box from the wrong stack and you get a visible color shift in the middle of a living room floor.

We've caught 47 potential errors with this checklist in the past 18 months. Most of them were lot mismatches and trim thickness, which are exactly the things that don't announce themselves until it's expensive.

Things this checklist won't save you from

Batch-to-batch color variation is normal for porcelain and ceramic. It's not a defect, and no supplier is going to guarantee a perfect match across production runs. Order 10–15% overage — 20% for herringbone or anything with diagonal cuts — and keep the spares in the original cartons.

Keep renovation materials on their own purchase order. I've watched a single "miscellaneous" PO absorb a client's personal online cart — grout samples, a box of rags, and an off-shoulder top someone added from a different browser tab — and turn a two-line reconciliation into a three-day email chain with accounting. Separate carts, separate codes, no exceptions.

And treat any "zero defects guaranteed" line as marketing, not a shipping term. Per FTC guidance on advertising claims, performance statements have to be substantiated, but "guaranteed" in a sales email is not the same as a written warranty. Get the warranty document before you sign, not after.

Run the eight steps, keep the sample on site, and write down what you almost got wrong. That log is worth more than the checklist.