Are Tiles Masonry?

Mostly not. Brick, block, and stone laid up in mortar count as masonry. The ceramic or porcelain tile going down on a bathroom floor or a kitchen backsplash doesn’t, not in the sense a building inspector or an insurance form means it. There’s one real exception, and it’s not the tile most homeowners are asking about.

What Actually Counts as Masonry

Units. Mortar. Something that bears weight or at least could. That’s masonry in three words. Brick, concrete block, natural stone, and a handful of clay building products get bonded together with mortar into an assembly that stands on its own, wall or floor, load-bearing or not. The Concrete Masonry Association of Australia puts bricks, blocks, pavers, and retaining walls all under one roof for exactly that reason: same manufacturing family, same trade, same building code section.

Tile setting grew up next door to that trade, close enough that the two get confused constantly, far enough apart that a masonry inspector and a tile inspector are checking completely different things on a jobsite.

Tile and Masonry Share a Trade History, Not a Material

Here’s where the confusion actually starts. Tile-setting apprenticeship programs run right alongside brick and block at the International Masonry Institute, the training arm for the bricklayers’ union. Same union card covers both trades in a lot of jurisdictions, and plenty of trade schools teach tiling and masonry as one combined construction-skills track rather than two separate courses. ANSI A137.1 governs ceramic tile the way ASTM standards govern brick, and both sit inside the same construction-trades world.

That’s a labour and apprenticeship overlap, not a material classification. A brick wall holds itself up. Tile floors don’t, sitting instead on top of a substrate that was already doing the structural work before the tile ever showed up. Two trades that trained together, working on two completely different kinds of product, is the plain way to put it.

The One Kind of Tile That Really Is Masonry

Structural clay tile is the exception, and it’s not what’s in your shower. Hollow-cored fired clay units, laid up in mortar exactly like brick, load-bearing or fireproofing walls and floor arches built with the stuff from the late 1800s through the 1950s. Wikipedia’s own entry on it says the material “allows it to be laid in the same manner as other clay or concrete masonry,” which is about as direct a yes as this question gets from a source that isn’t trying to sell tile.

It fell out of use in North America once concrete masonry units took over, cheaper, more consistent, easier for a crew to run through fast. We open up walls in older buildings here on the Island occasionally and find hollow clay tile behind the plaster, always a surprise to whoever’s paying for the reno. That stuff genuinely is masonry, load-bearing history and all. What’s on your kitchen floor almost certainly isn’t the same material, and never was.

Roof Tile Gets Counted Too

Concrete roof tile sits in the same industry bucket as brick and block, at least on the manufacturing and trade-association side. Industry groups that track production and sustainability for concrete masonry lump roof tile in with bricks, blocks, and pavers as one product family, same raw material, same kiln-adjacent process, same trade body representing all of it.

Doesn’t mean a roofer and a mason do the same job. It means the material itself, cured concrete formed into units, sits closer to true masonry than a glazed ceramic wall tile ever will. Roofing isn’t work we touch here, floors, walls, showers, and backsplashes is the whole lane. Worth knowing the industry draws that line differently than most homeowners assume, even if it never changes anything about a kitchen job.

Brick-Look and Stone-Look Tile Isn’t Masonry Either

Half the “is tile masonry” confusion comes from a product that’s designed to look exactly like brick. Thin porcelain brick-look tile, the kind homeowners install as a backsplash or an accent wall, mimics real fired brick down to the texture and the slight colour variation between pieces. Underneath the surface it’s still porcelain, thinner than a true brick veneer, set with thinset over a flat wall rather than laid up in a mortar bed.

Real thin brick veneer, cut from actual clay brick and mortared in place, arguably crosses closer into masonry territory than porcelain ever does. Still not structural, but it’s genuine fired clay bonded with real mortar joints, not a printed finish. Ask which one a supplier is quoting before assuming “brick tile” means the same thing on every job. The two look nearly identical once they’re on the wall and behave completely differently over the life of the install.

Where the Confusion Actually Costs Someone Something

Nobody pulls a masonry permit to retile a shower. A building department cares about waterproofing, substrate, and slope in a wet area, not whether the finish material technically qualifies as masonry. That question doesn’t come up on a residential tile job here, ever.

Insurance is where it occasionally matters. Some home insurance applications ask whether exterior walls are “masonry construction,” meaning brick or block, and a homeowner with porcelain tile on the kitchen floor answers that question the same way as a home with vinyl plank, which is to say it has nothing to do with the tile. The confusion shows up more with buyers and renovators reading old permit records for a heritage home and running into “structural clay tile” on a hundred-year-old wall assembly, then assuming every tile they’re looking at now carries the same structural weight. It doesn’t.

Can You Drill Into Tile With a Masonry Bit?

Yes, and it works better than most homeowners expect. A carbide-tipped masonry bit chews through ceramic or standard porcelain the same way it works on brick, just slower and with more care around cracking the glaze. For dense rectified porcelain specifically, a diamond-tipped bit runs cooler and lasts longer, but a masonry bit gets a one-off hole done without buying a specialty tool for a single grab bar or towel hook.

Start at a shallow angle to score through the glaze, then straighten the drill to vertical once there’s a dimple to register in. No hammer function until the bit is fully through the tile face, hammer-drilling on the glazed surface is what shatters it before the hole even starts. Painter’s tape over the drill point stops the bit from walking on the slick glaze, and a slow, steady hand beats speed every single time on this material. Same bit, same technique, whether the wall behind the tile is drywall, cement board, or actual block.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is tile classed as masonry?

Generally, no. Building codes classify masonry as mortar-bonded units, brick, block, stone, that carry or could carry structural load. Standard ceramic and porcelain tile is a finish material set in thinset over a substrate, a different category entirely, even though the two trades trained side by side historically and still share apprenticeship programs in some regions.

Can I drill into tile with a masonry bit?

Yes. A carbide-tipped masonry bit works fine on ceramic and standard porcelain. Go slow, skip the hammer function until fully through the glaze, and switch to a diamond bit for dense rectified porcelain if the carbide tip starts skating instead of cutting into the surface.

Are tile floors considered masonry?

No, not the tile floor most homes have. A ceramic or porcelain floor sits on subfloor and thinset, nothing structural about the tile itself. Structural clay tile floor arches from a hundred years ago are the rare genuine exception, and that’s not the product going into a kitchen renovation today.

What counts as masonry?

Brick, concrete block, natural stone, and structural clay tile, anything made of individual units bonded together with mortar into a self-supporting assembly. Concrete roof tile gets grouped in on the manufacturing side too. Glazed wall and floor tile, the kind in most bathrooms and kitchens, doesn’t meet that definition, no matter how convincing the brick-look finish is.

Drilling a hole for a grab bar, or planning something bigger like a full bathroom tile installation or a fresh floor tile installation, the masonry question matters less than getting the substrate and layout right the first time. That’s the part that actually holds up over the next twenty years, not which column the finish falls under on a permit form. Get in touch if there’s a specific wall or floor you’re trying to figure out before buying material.

Related Questions

• Can I Use a Masonry Drill Bit on Tiles?
• Do You Use a Hammer Drill for Tile?
• Does Tile Go Under the Toilet Flange, or Does the Flange Sit on Top?

Jordan Tile & Stone

Tile installation and repair across central Vancouver Island: Campbell River, Courtenay, Comox, Oyster Bay, Nanoose Bay, Parksville, Qualicum Beach and Nanaimo.

Phone: (250) 201-3891
Hours: Monday to Sunday, 7:00 am to 6:00 pm
Address: 4423 Patricia Rd, Oyster Bay, BC V9H 1B8