Compare
Porcelain wall panels vs. large-format porcelain slabs
Touchstone™ is the same material as a large-format porcelain slab — both are real porcelain, so the finished look is the same. The difference is the system. A raw slab is beautiful but brittle, heavy, and hard to handle, so it needs a specialized installer, adhesive, and careful cutting. Touchstone bonds that same porcelain to an engineered waterproof backer and mounts it on a mechanical track, so a full surround goes up in a day with standard skills.
Side by side
| Touchstone | Large-format porcelain slabs | |
|---|---|---|
| Surface material | Real porcelain | Real porcelain |
| Handling | Bonded to a backer, handles like a panel | Brittle, heavy slab, prone to cracking |
| Installer | Standard skills, factory-trained | Specialized large-format slab installer |
| Attachment | Mechanical track, no thinset | Thinset or adhesive over a prepped substrate |
| Install time | One day | Multiple days, skill-dependent |
| Seams | Panel seams, color-matched silicone | Fewer, larger fields |
Where Touchstone wins
- The same real porcelain, without the slab-handling risk
- Installs in a day with standard skills, no specialized slab crew
- A mechanical mount and a repeatable, engineered kit
The one tradeoff
Raw slabs give you one thing a panel kit can't: floor-to-ceiling continuous fields and custom sizes — if you have a skilled large-format installer to handle them.
Common questions
Touchstone's face is real large-format porcelain, the same material as a slab. The difference is that we bond it to a waterproof backer and mount it mechanically, so it installs like a panel instead of a fragile slab.
You can, but slabs are brittle and heavy, so they need a specialized installer, suction handling, adhesive, and careful cutting. Touchstone delivers the same porcelain with a standard one-day install.
Yes. Touchstone is the same porcelain surface. The main visible difference is the panel seams, sealed with color-matched silicone, versus a slab's larger continuous fields.
The system
See the Touchstone porcelain wall panel system.
Real 6mm porcelain on a patented mechanical track. A full shower surround installs in a day, with no thinset, grout, or wet trades.