Why Glass Mosaic is a Great Building Material for Architects, Interior Designers and Home Improvement DIYs

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History

Mosaic history can be tracked back to 2000 B.C. in ancient China, and glass mosaics became popular in architecture during the Rinascimento (Renaissance) period. Glass mosaics have been extremely popular in Asia since the 1980s but began to diminish in 1990s. However, in the earlier part of 21st century, with the new technology and development, the glass mosaic made a strong come back in Asia and has been becoming more popular in North America since 2004.

Merits of glass mosaic characteristics

With the new manufacturing technology, seems that nothing is impossible in terms of colors, sizes, styles, as well as materials used in the glass mosaic. This wide variety is a distinguishing characteristic of this building material. Also, glass mosaics are used for a very broad spectrum of applications due to its IMPERVIOUS nature. Glass does not absorb any water (a technical materials term as “zero water absorption rate”) thus it has no shrinkage or expansion issues, thus it can be used for both indoor and outdoor applications.

A lot of materials can absorb water thus it will have the expansion or shrinkage problems when the temperature changes. When the water absorption rate exceeds a certain degree it can not be used as outdoor materials, for example, ceramic tiles; the ANSI standards defines the water absorption rate as being less than 0.5% which can be used as an outdoor building product.

Wide variety of applications

Glass mosaics can be used for a variety of building installations including both indoors and outdoors, for residential flooring (if the surface is polished, it is not recommended for flooring applications where slipping is a hazard), walls, pillars & columns, artwork, furniture, baths, kitchens and swimming pools. The sky is the limit for applications, thus it attracts architects and interior designers’ attention, but DIY’s can certainly also use the glass mosaic to shine in your remodeling projects.

With today’s manufacturing technology, glass mosaic can be custom made based on your design. The turnaround time to make a custom sample can amazingly be as short as 5 business days. Yes. 5 business days to make a sample based on the size, color code or an actual sample you get from somewhere else. These methods could barely be imagined as little as 5 years ago.

Materials used to make the glass mosaics

Originally, the glass mosaic type was a vitreous glass mosaic, which was used mostly to make swimming pools. But with the faster and more efficient technology and workmanship developed during the past 5 to 10 years, the glass mosaic tile has evolved to be a material that is very popular for other applications, in addition to the original vitreous glass mosaic as:

1. Crystal glass mosaic, which can be transparent, and is how it gets the name “crystal”, but using color paints on the back of the mosaic means that thousands of colors are possible.

2. Iridescent glass mosaic, which has an iridescent coating on the surface of glass mosaic to make the glass mosaic reflect different colors, and can be a terrific option for night clubs, casinos and entertainment places.

3. Metallic glass mosaic, this is a very special material in which the color is not on the back of a mosaic, but the color is melted into the fusion of glass in an extremely high temperature environment. When the glass fusion is out of the kiln and cooled down, the color is part of the glass inside and is evenly distributed.

4. Van Gogh glass mosaic , which goes through the similar manufacturing process as metallic glass mosaic. The difference is that with the metallic glass it can be told that it is obviously glass, but the Van Gogh glass mosaic gives you an oil painted texture on its surface.

5. Stone glass mosaic. The stone mosaic is another kind of decorative building material having been used for more than 2000 years it has endured the ages. People have creatively blended glass and natural stone to make it a stone glass mosaic, which adds a natural yet decorative touch to the area it’s installed in.

Giving the high demand and competition among manufacturers, we believe the innovation will be taking place fast and new types of glass mosaics could be created from time to time. We will keep track of the technology closely and keep you posted, if interested, please make sure to check back from time to time or RSS our article regarding this topic.

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