Ask the installers what they think. Just because something is made in China doesn't mean the quality is poor. In fact, since the marble is a natural stone, rather than something that is manufactured from scratch, I would think all you would need to worry about is if the marble tiles are uniform, flat, and consistently polished. The Chinese have an ancient civilization that has been building with stone for a very long time.

Thanks for your input kudzu9. The installers are subs hired by the general contractor with a long history with the g.c. I've read on some tile suppliers sites that they state they do not sell marble from China so I was wondering if anyone knows of a quality issue in particular.

I found this thread. Bill Vincent was the go-to tile expert here until he moved to the John Bridges forum. You might check with them.

Here is a link that might be useful: Chinese marble

Thank you may_flowers. I appreciate you finding more information for me, on this. I hadn't found that thread when I searched. :)

We used a mix of tile for our master bath.
- White italian calacatta tile on floor
- China white threshold & shower sills from Lowes
- "Calacatta" mosiac from god knows where, for niche & floor

What I can tell you from our research & experience with white marble from china is it tends to be softer and more fragile, and the quality control is poor. This is why some contractors don't like working with it or refuse to work with it.

We had to have our sills cut at by a marble fabricator and although the agreed they wouldn't guarantee they wouldn't break. We got lucky and they didn't. But looking at the extra cut pieces I can tell you the rough ends crumble very easily.

So you should factor in buying a lot more extra tiles when using marble from China.

Also agree with what Bill said in the attached forum about the iron deposits and mosaic backing. We ordered "calacatta" mosaic for our shower niche and floor. Looking back at it, I am not sure that the product was Italian calacatta but probably a mix....some Italian calacatta mixed in with cheaper tiles from god knows where. I can tell you there were tiles with iron spots that looked like rust. The mosaic was supposed to be polished and there were pieces where they were unpolished. Thankfully it was a large mosaic (2"x4" pieces) because our poor contractor had to cut the bad pieces out and lay in pieces that were ok. Thankfully we ordered enough extra and we have a contractor with a lot of patience. :-)

A manufacturer once told me climate has a lot to do with marble quality. Vermont has some of the best and I’ve worked with Greek marble which was garbage. I’m not sold on communist marble due to some deep staining issues I’ve delt with….

HU-190694267, Is the staining evident pre-installation, or does it happen over time and exposure to water?

Years later now, I can report that some of this marble tile from China which was installed is flaking in spots. Not a lot, but it is occurring. Also, asking the installers if it was quality material wouldn’t have been of any use. I had to have them tear out a lot of the tile they installed in the shower and the entire floor, due to poor workmanship. Someone else finished the job. the GC didn’t care at all. His main interest (per his project mgr. who was in charge of the job), was to play in a band.

We had our bathroom project done over 10 years ago. As I mentioned in my earlier post we used a combination of Italian Calacatta and white marble from China. The China marble was mainly used for door thresholds and shower sills. We haven’t had any issues with the marble. We took great care not to select any pieces that appeared to have any iron staining present before install.