StepWise™

Marazzi, the international manufacturer of high-quality ceramic tiles, has developed new, patented production process, StepWise™, which can be applied to some new collections, demonstrating its efficacy on high-performance products like Terratech technical stoneware, new stone-look stonewares in the Mystone collection, and the Crogiolo D_Segni Blend highly decorative small-size tiles. The development of this leading-edge technology confirms Marazzi’s ongoing genius for innovation.

StepWise™ technology gives products a high degree of slip resistance combined with a surface that is still soft to the touch and easy to clean, since it has no superficial roughness. Manufactured with state-of-the-art technologies, porcelain stoneware provides outstanding resistance to mechanical stresses, chemicals, wear, scratches, deep abrasion and bending; it is easy to disinfect, and withstands frost, fire, mold and UV radiation. All the characteristics and color properties of stoneware surfaces are immutable, remaining unchanged over time and in all weather conditions.
StepWise™ is not a surface treatment: it is an intrinsic technical characteristic of the new products concerned. Marazzi has succeeded in modifying the material's characteristics by innovations in every industrial phase: from research into materials and glazes, to the type of grinding and pressing processes, through even to the firing procedure.
The new Marazzi stonewares, made using this new technology, also undergo a mechanical treatment across the entire surface which maintains their soft "feel", combined with a high dynamic coefficient of friction (DCOF, ANSI American National Standard). This coefficient measures tiles' performances when their surfaces are wet: 0.42 Newton is the standard value for surfaces installed indoors. StepWise™ has a DCOF of 0.60 Newton.

The benefits of installing products manufactured using the StepWise™ technology are obvious: full compliance with the friction values required by the toughest standards is combined with very attractive, soft-touch, easy-clean surfaces.
With its combination of high slip resistance and exceptionally easy care - these new surfaces can be sanitized with just water and a delicate cleaner -, StepWise™ stonewares are the ideal solution for heavily used locations: transit points, commercial kitchens, swimming-pools, public toilets and showers, private and hotel outdoor areas, etc.
The collections manufactured with the StepWise™ technology provide compliance with very demanding performance specifications while still enabling a "total look" across large architectural spaces, where continuity between indoor flooring and outdoor paving is increasingly central to the concept. Decors and colors, textures and shades already in the catalog are unchanged, with the added potential for expansion into new architectural dimensions.

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