Dye What?! Stop the Dye Lot Madness!

During the kitchen remodel process my husband and I bought a few single ceramic tiles and brought them home to see what they look like in the house. The tile I fell in love with was from Home Depot called Marazzi VitaElegante Grigio. It was a beautiful gray tile with dark gray stripes that resembles marble. Beautiful! A few weeks later we went to Home Depot and loaded up our car with 9 boxes. We never thought twice about the tiles. A couple days before our contractor was going to install the floor he came to me asking if I realized that the tiles we had purchased were a different color/shade than the single tile we had bought. What??? I looked in the box and it was the same tile, but that beautiful dark gray tile was now a tanish light gray. It was crazy how much lighter the tile we bought was. How could this be? Our contractor then explained to us about the dye lot number.

Every box of tile has a dye lot number on the outside box. A dye lot number is the production run of a batch of tiles. So basically if you buy two boxes of tile with two different dye lot numbers then those tiles could look completely different from one another. We had no idea! With limited time to replace the tile I was on a mission to find the darker gray tile. I went to 3 Home Depots and finally at the last store I was able to find the darker gray tile.

Dye Lot Number 80700- Always labeled on the outside of box. 

Here's a couple tips when buying tile:
1. Tile is stupid heavy, so make sure you get the right tile in the beginning because loading and unloading X2 is hard labor!

2. Make sure you buy tile in unopened boxes. Buying tile from a big box store like Home Depot means that the price is good and so is the return policy. When people over buy tile they can easily return it back to the store where that tile can be mixed up and accidentally put inside open boxes. Play it safe and make sure you tiles come from unopened boxes that all have the same dye lot number.