The standards layer, measured rather than assumed
The page originally claimed the defensible asset was "a maintained, opinionated taxonomy of tile and lighting spec fields with the synonym maps that make it work". That taxonomy exists, is international, and is free.
ETIM (Electrotechnical Information Model) is the open international classification standard for technical products. It defines classes, codes and standardised technical attributes precisely so manufacturers, distributors and retailers can exchange product data unambiguously. Its stated scope is electrical, HVAC, plumbing and building materials. Lighting sits at its historical core.
BMEcat is the paired XML exchange format: manufacturers structure catalogues as BMEcat with ETIM classification embedded, giving a standard machine-readable route from supplier to distributor. ETIM is increasingly the feature-data backbone for BIM objects, linking specify–procure–install.
For ceramic tiles, ISO 13006:2018 already defines classification and characteristics — water absorption groups, extruded versus dry-pressed, dimensional tolerances, surface quality — plus canonical terminology for glaze, engobed and rectified. That is a substantial share of the "14–20 fields" already standardised.
The conclusion was: do not build a proprietary taxonomy. Adopt ETIM plus ISO 13006 and compete on mapping into them.
ETIM tile coverage, enumerated
That conclusion was then tested properly, and the answer is partial — better than assumed on fields, worse on the one field that matters most.
The access path is solved. The ETIM API returns 401 without credentials, but bSDD serves all of ETIM 10.1 free under ODC-By with no authentication — 5,640 classes, 17,377 features, public swagger spec. The class pages at viewer.etim-international.com prerender and are enumerable via a 5,680-URL sitemap. The taxonomy is machine-readable today at zero cost and zero paperwork.
The classes that exist:
- EC011340 Ceramic tile — 28 features, group EG020056 (Masonry and tile material), published since ETIM 8.0. Across all ~200 bSDD dictionaries this is the only real ceramic tile class; "porcelain stoneware" returns zero.
- EC011341 Mosaic tile (21 features), EC010182 Natural stone tile (16), EC012349 Concrete tile (30), EC011708 Tile profile (11).
- Flooring group EG020068 holds 13 classes: EC004040 Parquet (18), EC004041 Laminate (15), EC004085 Solid wood (12), EC004931 PVC flooring (14, added only December 2024), EC012273 Screed (17), EC012271 Rubber (4), EC012272 Plastic (3).
The field mappings are real and usable, which corrects the earlier pessimism. Thickness EF020850; nominal dimensions EF020848/49 plus production dimensions EF020855/56; finish EF020841/46, EF024897, EF020838; slip EF020842 (DIN 51097 A/B/C) and EF020843 (R9–R13); PEI-equivalent EF020844; frost EF020845 (boolean only); rectified EF020839/40, EF022394; colour EF020851.
Lighting is roughly four times deeper, as predicted: EC001744 downlight/spot/floodlight carries 118 features, EC002892 ceiling and wall luminaire 115, EC000062 street 85, EC001957 emergency 68.
One telling detail: ETIM models the tiling consumables better than the tile. Tile adhesive EC011707 has 42 features and tile grout EC011709 has 28, against 28 for the ceramic tile itself. The standard grew out of the wholesale channel and it shows. Soft flooring is a genuine taxonomy gap — no carpet, textile, linoleum or LVT class exists at all.
The derivation rule breaks inside the standard
The page's worked example of rule-based gap-filling was: ISO 13006 ties water absorption to group, porcelain is definitionally below 0.5%, therefore porcelain-versus-ceramic is derived, never asked for.
EC011340 Ceramic tile has no water absorption feature. That derivation cannot be expressed in the standard's own tile class.
It is not a one-off. Across all 17,377 ETIM features there are zero occurrences of ISO 13006 / EN 14411 group, DCOF / ANSI A326.3, modulus of rupture, breaking strength, crazing resistance, stain resistance, or thermal shock. Frost resistance exists only as a boolean, not the tested class. It is a modelling gap rather than a vocabulary limit — EC012349 Concrete tile does carry water absorption — and nothing relevant sits in the dynamic pipeline, so no fix is imminent.
Nor can the hole be filled from another free standard:
- eCl@ss 16.0 has the better taxonomy — 22-47 Tile/panel is 76 classes split by body type, roughly matching ISO 13006 bands, and 22-46 Flooring is 39 classes including carpet, linoleum and cork. But Advanced 16.0 tile classes expose only 7 properties, all REACH/SVHC or commercial, with no technical aspect. ETIM wins on physics, eCl@ss on classes, neither on both.
- ISO 13006:2018 is the real tile data model — A/B forming by Ev groups Ia–III, porcelain at Ev ≤ 0.5%, Annex N carrying the PEI scale, ISO 10545 test methods — but it is paid, prose, and not machine-readable.
- EN 14411:2012 remains the CE and Declaration of Performance basis. CPR (EU) 2024/3110 will not displace it for years, proceeding family by family with standardisation requests in 2027/2028. No tile digital product passport model exists or is commissioned.
So "adopt ETIM, don't rebuild it" was too glib. The honest position: adopt ETIM as the spine, then extend it with water absorption, ISO 13006 group, breaking strength and DCOF, which no free standard models for tiles. That extension is a defensible asset and unavoidable work.
The standard exists; the data does not
This was established by enumeration rather than by failing to find things, which makes it unusually solid.
All 1,383 registered data suppliers in the Dutch 2BA datapool were enumerated. Absent: Tarkett, Gerflor, Interface, Desso, Unilin/Quick-Step, Kährs, Bolon, Rockfon, Armstrong, Uzin, Bostik, Forbo/Eurocol, Mapei, Ardex, Omnicol, Knauf, Saint-Gobain, Schlüter. Among the top 25 data suppliers in the "Bouw" sector, not one is a tile or flooring manufacturer — they are bathroom, electrical, HVAC, fastener and tool companies.
Forbo Flooring Systems: all 96 child sitemaps enumerated, and exactly one URL in the entire Forbo estate matches /etim/ — the Eurocol adhesives page. Uzin/Uzin Utz: zero ETIM URLs across full sitemap crawls. Germany's 2022 building-materials launch plan recorded "Fliesen und Natursteine" as the one assortment group with no industry participants at all. Mosa's only traceable ETIM data was applied downstream by a wholesaler rather than published by Mosa. Villeroy & Boch's 2BA presence is its bathroom division, not tiles. Marazzi is nowhere.
And yet flooring is officially in scope, correcting an earlier "could not establish". ETIM UK states its Building Materials sector includes "Walling, Flooring & Roofing Materials, Structural steel, Civil infrastructure, Doors & windows, Finishing & Decoration Products". The Builders Merchants Federation has been Sector Lead since 1 January 2020 — 1,020 members, GBP 51.6bn combined sales. ETIM Netherlands created a "Tegels" (tiles) commission after mid-2020. Eleven of eighteen national chapters run building materials.
The problem is participation, not permission.
Adoption cuts both ways, and the unflattering read is at least as plausible
The flattering read: the normalisation work is genuinely undone. A free, machine-readable tile schema exists with 28 usable fields including R-value and a PEI equivalent, and not one tile brand has populated it. The gap between "standard exists" and "data exists" is exactly what this idea proposes to close.
The unflattering read: adoption is absent because demand is absent. ETIM has admitted flooring since January 2020. The Builders Merchants Federation — 1,020 companies, GBP 51.6bn of sales, precisely the channel that would consume tile spec data — has led the sector for five and a half years. ETIM NL stood up a dedicated commission. Germany ran a launch in which tiles and natural stone attracted zero industry participants.
Five years of permission, an organised merchant constituency and a purpose-built commission produced no tile data. That is not a story about missing tooling. If merchants were losing money for want of structured tile attributes, a brand would have published or a merchant would have paid someone to do it. The more likely explanation: tile selection is driven by appearance, price, availability and range, while compliance fields are supplied once as a PDF datasheet or Declaration of Performance at specification time — not needed per-SKU in a catalogue.
If that is right, it inverts the central split described in the next chapter. The compliance-grade schema may have no commercial buyer at all.
The cheapest disconfirming test is not a search: ask a tile merchant and an architect which fields they query per-SKU versus accept as a PDF. If the answer is "appearance and availability, plus a datasheet on request", the standards work is a cost, not a moat.