Stick with porcelain for a steamer. You don’t want a 25K shower to yellow or crack in just a few years time.

I saw some really beautiful Neolith floor tiles at the Neolith showroom this week!

We're installing Neolith counters and considering Neolith floor tiles for our kitchen. I don't know if Neolith tiles are appropriate for showers but the floor tiles were surprisingly affordable, available in many different sizes, and if the standard sizes don't work the showroom we visited will cut them to the desired fee for a flat fee.

The cost psf for the Neolith tiles were comparable to Porcelonosa's prices sales price during their 40% off sale and the quality/color/etc seemed much higher than the Porcelonosa tiles I saw a few weeks ago.

Thank you! I’ll check this out, may be a great solution.

Neolith IS tile. It’s just big tile. Big, very expensive, tile. It requires advanced and certified skilled labor that is really difficult to find. That increases the cost tremendously. It can cost above just applying something like Corian or Cambria, or exotic green veined onyx, to your bath walls. It’s a luxury material, not a basic bath material.

Verbo, while certified installers are absolutely key for counter installations floor installations are a different story. My designer and I discussed installation concerns with both the Neolith distributor for the west coast as well as the fabricator (same company owns both the distributor and fabrication company). We were assured that a good tile installer would have no trouble laying Neolith floor tiles. Counters are a total different story.

Neolith has a special tile program that offers favorable pricing for certain patterns/colors. The floor tile is quite thin and light. Otherwise we can choose any slab not in the tile program and have it custom cut for a flat $250 fee. Delivery to our home is an additional $75 flat fee.

OP, please do your own research as I have no idea whether Neolith is a good application for steam showers. We briefly considered installing a steam shower but decided against it due to other design considerations.

Regarding Corian prices, we just placed our order for our custom Grifform shower pan last week.

Our Pearl Gray Corian pan was almost $4000 before the 35% rush fee we're paying for faster turnaround. That's just the pan cost without installation. Standard turnaround for Grifform pans is over 5-6 business weeks after signed shop drawings plus an additional 5 business days for shipping from Oregon to Berkeley, CA.

Our Glacier White Corian walls for a fairly small shower with bench and niche (all Corian) will be around $16,000 for materials and labor. We don't know for sure because our fabricator won't measure and template until after our pan is installed.

We live in a very high COL city in the SF Bay Area.

You are incorrect on all points. A floor install is actually more difficult than a counter installation. The prep work to get the substrate flat enough is much more difficult than for a standard large format tile surface. And the materials handling and labor to transition from vertical to horizontal is critical. That’s the point it likes to break. We won’t even get into the lippage and breakage that happens on the ”easier” (NOT) install on a floor. I know of one arrogant contractor who also thought it would be easier. He broke an entire half container load, save 2 on a vertical fireplace. 30K gone.

Corian is absolutely possible for steam showers, when detailed and built properly. Yes, Corian is not inexpensive. But Neolith, done properly, by a *qualified* contractor, to certified standards, is MORE than Corian. Done improperly, by a half priced tile guy, it’s money flushed directly to the sewer, and then another 25K needing to be spent to redo.

https://cdn1.neolith.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Manual-T%C3%A9cnico-de-Encimeras-de-cocina-North-America-EN.pdf