If you shop carefully, you may find a porcelain within your budget. But if you don't, not to worry-- ceramic is good, too, and generally much cheaper. The advantage of porcelain is that the clay is denser, and fired hotter, making it tougher. A solid body porcelain [or color body or color through-- all the same] is unglazed, and is very nice if you are doing a pattern that necesitates a lot of cutting-- unlike a ceramic, where the body of the tile will always be terra cotta, or a glazed ceramic, where the center of the tile will be white-ish, regardless of the color of the glaze. Solid body tile hides damage well thanks to is same-color interior, and [if you buy a textured one] is less slippery when wet than glazed tiles. But ceramic [properly installed] is far from fragile and can last for centuries [you don't hear about hardwood floors surviving from the Roman Empire!]. Buy one with a good wear rating [light commercial or better], and high CoF [coefficient of friction-- slipperiness]. Both types are stain proof and very low maintenence IF you either use a dark grout, or keep the grout well sealed, or both. Neither will scratch with normal wear, and either will look like new for decades [can't say that about any other type of floor]. Make sure your subfloor is rigid enough for tile, and ask for a modern underlay like Schlutter Ditra ['de-couples' the tile from the subfloor, which helps prevent cracking]. BTW: A few years ago I laid my own tile in one bathroom, the coatroom, laundry and kitchen. A couple tiles cracked in the bath where I used hardibacker, but none cracked that was laid over Ditra. The kitchen has solid body porcelain, and is suprisingly slip resistant, even when wet. But the coat and laundry room ceramics still look like new, even the charcoal colored grout.

I had the same dilemna. I have golden oak floors throughout the rest of the house, but I wanted a darker floor in the kitchen. I would have loved an rustic, wide plank wood floor. This floor would not have matched the floors in the rest of the house and I was warned that the transitions from one floor to the other would not look so good by the saddles. In the end, I decided to go with the wood look tile because it works better with radiant heat than wood. I am so glad we did. Between the children and dog it was a good choice for us. I still have to stain the saddles at the two doorways that lead out of the kitchen, but it will be fine. If I used any floor other than golden oak, I would have the transition issue anyway. Love my tile floor! So easy to maintain.

Oceanside Glass Tile has a true white glass tile (White Non-Iridescent #101), solid white all the way through. Very glossy. Page 4 on the pdf below: http://www.glasstile.com/pdf/spec-sheets/Muse.pdf They are available in many different sizes.

We have a similar tile around our wood-burning stove at our cottage. The walls of our cottage are light pine, so we went with darker brown (that matches the knots in the pine wall) engineered wooden planks. Then we used slate tiles around the fireplace. This is the best pic I have on me, you can see it a bit.