Here is a number that should be making product managers, category heads, and dealer development teams uncomfortable right now.
Fifty-four per cent.
That is the share of India’s residential housing sales that were in homes priced above ₹1 crore in the first half of 2026, according to Knight Frank India’s latest report. Up from 49% a year earlier. And importantly, the direction is unambiguous — affordable homes below ₹50 lakh fell 15% in sales volume, the mid-income bracket between ₹50 lakh and ₹1 crore dipped 5%, and the premium-and-above segment is the only part of the market that is structurally growing.
This is not a blip. It is not a post-pandemic luxury surge that will revert to the mean once economic conditions normalise. India’s residential real estate market has been premiumising steadily for four consecutive years, driven by the twin forces of rising incomes among formal-sector buyers and a structural constraint in affordable supply as land costs and construction input prices have pushed developer economics toward higher price points.
The ₹1 crore home buyer is now the modal Indian residential customer in the eight cities that Knight Frank tracks. That buyer has different expectations for every finish in the home — flooring, bathroom, kitchen surfaces — than the buyer of a ₹35 lakh apartment.
The question every manufacturer and dealer in tiles, sanitaryware, and stone should be sitting with this morning is a direct one: is your product mix, your showroom display, and your sales team’s specification capability actually serving the buyer who is now the majority of the market? Or are you still weighted toward the segment that has been steadily shrinking?
What a ₹1 Crore Home Actually Requires at the Finish Stage
Let’s be specific, because the category implications of the premiumisation shift are different for tiles, sanitaryware, and stone.
A home priced at ₹1 crore in a city like Bengaluru, Hyderabad, or Pune typically means a 2 BHK or compact 3 BHK in a project by a reputable developer, in a location with reasonable infrastructure access. The finishes in this segment have shifted dramatically over the past three years. The standard specification that would have satisfied this buyer in 2020 — 600×600 double charge vitrified in the living room, standard ceramic wall tile in the bathroom — is no longer the benchmark. The buyer of a ₹1 crore home in 2026 has seen Instagram and YouTube. They’ve walked through model apartments with 800×1600 marble-look GVT. They expect a bathroom that doesn’t look like a standard builder toilet.
For tiles, the minimum credible specification in the ₹1 crore segment now typically means 800×1600 GVT or PGVT for living room and master bedroom floors. Wall tiles are moving toward 300×1200 or 600×1200 formats with muted textures and minimal grout lines. The bathroom floor needs anti-skid texture at a large format — 600×600 at minimum, 800×800 gaining ground. The price of this specification has actually become more accessible than many dealers realise. The premium over standard 600×600 vitrified has narrowed from 35 to 40% in 2020 to closer to 20 to 25% in 2026, as more manufacturers have scaled production of larger formats.
Homes priced between ₹2 crore and ₹5 crore — which represent the fastest-growing bracket within the premium segment — have specifications that go further. Large format porcelain slabs at 1200×2400 or 800×2400 in living and dining areas. Bookmatched stone-look surfaces in master bathrooms. Natural stone accents in foyers and kitchen platforms. These are products with meaningfully higher per-unit value and correspondingly higher margin contribution per square foot.
For sanitaryware, the ₹1 crore-and-above home is consistently specifying wall-hung water closets over floor-mounted, concealed cisterns, single-lever or thermostatic faucets, and shower systems rather than basic showerheads. The individual items are more expensive, but they are also more margin-productive for the dealer.
For stone and marble, the premium residential shift has reopened a category that spent a decade losing ground to ceramic tiles on price and maintenance grounds. High-quality engineered marble, onyx, and bookmatched stone panels are back in premium residential specifications — not as entire floors, but as feature surfaces in bathrooms, entrance lobbies, and kitchen counters. A dealer who carries a credible stone and natural surface offering alongside their tile range is better positioned in the premium residential conversation than one who can only show ceramic alternatives.
The SKU Mix Problem Nobody Is Addressing Directly
Here is what is actually happening in a significant proportion of tile and sanitaryware dealerships across India’s major cities.
The showroom displays were built three to five years ago, weighted toward 60×60 vitrified, standard ceramic wall tiles in mid-range finishes, and floor-mounted sanitaryware in mid-market brands. The salesperson’s product knowledge is deepest in these categories — they know the sizes, the finishes, the price points, and the objection handling for the products they’ve been selling most.
When a ₹1.5 crore apartment buyer walks in and says “main 800×1600 chahta hoon, marble look, matte finish” — three things happen. The dealer either doesn’t have the range in that format. Or they have it but it’s been sitting in a corner display that nobody has explained properly. Or the floor staff pivots to a familiar 600×1200 product and tries to convince the customer it’s just as good.
None of these outcomes serves the customer well. None of them captures the value that the premium segment actually generates for a dealer’s business. And in a market where 54% of buyers are in the premium segment, the cumulative opportunity cost of this misalignment is significant.
Porcelain tiles are already projected to grow at an 11.33% CAGR through 2031 — significantly faster than the overall tile market’s 3.26% CAGR. The consumer preference for large-format seamless surfaces, the influence of digital media on home design aspirations, and the improving availability and pricing of large-format production are all structural tailwinds. The market is not moving toward premium formats because of a trend — it is moving there because a permanent shift in the composition of the buyer base has already happened.
The manufacturing side has moved. Morbi’s investment in large-format lines, digital printing quality, and slab production has made this product genuinely accessible at price points that work for mid-premium residential buyers. The gap between where production is going and where many dealer showrooms are still positioned is the gap that represents lost revenue for everyone in the chain.
The Natural Stone Question Nobody Is Asking
There is a third category worth raising directly, because it sits in a blind spot for most tile-focused dealers and manufacturers.
India’s natural stone industry — marble, granite, quartzite, onyx — has been in a structurally complicated position for a decade. The competition from ceramic tiles that convincingly replicate stone textures at lower cost and lower maintenance burden took real share from the natural stone category, particularly in the mid-market residential segment. For a homebuyer spending ₹40 to ₹60 lakh, a Statuario-look PGVT tile at ₹80 per square foot made more sense than Statuario marble at ₹350 per square foot.
But the buyer spending ₹1.5 crore or ₹3 crore on a home is making a different calculation. At that price point, the home is both a living space and an investment. Authentic materials carry value signals that ceramics, however convincing, don’t fully replicate. A marble foyer is a status expression that a marble-look tile foyer approximates but does not match.
The premium residential shift documented in the Knight Frank data is reopening the natural stone market from the top down. Premium developers are specifying natural stone in show apartments and common areas because their buyers notice and respond to it. Once a buyer sees natural marble in the model apartment, they’re more likely to ask for it in their own unit’s bathroom or foyer.
Dealers who carry only tile and sanitaryware are leaving the top end of this conversation to someone else. The full premium residential specification — 800×1600 GVT for living areas, natural marble for bathroom feature walls and kitchen counters, premium wall-hung sanitaryware for bathrooms — is a single shopping conversation that a well-positioned dealer should be able to host entirely. Most can’t, because their stone offering is either absent or token.
This is a commercial gap as much as a product gap. The dealer who can credibly handle all three categories for a premium residential customer is capturing a higher share of wallet per project than the dealer who handles one.
The Honest Audit That Most Dealers Haven’t Done
The practical action that this data demands is a category-level audit — of showroom display allocation, SKU depth, staff product knowledge, and sales conversation capability across premium formats.
Ask yourself five questions about your current setup.
What percentage of your tile display area shows 800×1600 or larger format products? If the answer is less than 30%, your display allocation is lagging the premium segment’s share of the buyer base.
Can your floor staff explain the difference between GVT and PGVT in terms that a consumer understands — why one is better for matte finishes and the other for high-gloss looks, what maintenance implications follow — or do they default to price when asked? If it’s the latter, your team’s premium conversation capability needs investment.
Do you carry a credible wall-hung water closet and concealed cistern combination from an organised sanitaryware brand, and is it properly displayed at a price point your target customer can see themselves paying? Or is your sanitaryware display essentially a mid-market floor-mounted range?
Is natural stone part of your offering at all — even at a limited, curated level? And if not, do you know which nearby dealer is capturing that part of the conversation with your customers?
What share of your last quarter’s billing came from products in the ₹80 per square foot and above tile category? If that share is less than 30%, your revenue mix is significantly under-indexed relative to the buyer composition that Knight Frank’s data describes.
These are not comfortable questions for every dealer. Many have built their business on volume in the mid-market and economy segments, and there is nothing wrong with that business. But in a market where the mid-market is shrinking by 5% annually and the premium segment is growing — and where the product range to serve that premium segment is now genuinely available at accessible price points — the strategic choice of where to allocate display, where to invest in staff training, and which manufacturer conversations to prioritise has real commercial consequences.
The Market Has Already Moved
The premiumisation of India’s housing market is not a forecast. It is a current reality that Knight Frank’s data simply confirms in its latest form. The ₹1 crore-plus segment crossing 50% of market sales was not a threshold that anyone in the industry should have been surprised by — the direction has been clear for three consecutive years.
The question is not whether your customers are now predominantly premium-segment buyers. In most of India’s major urban markets, they are. The question is whether your product range, your showroom, your team’s knowledge, and your manufacturer relationships are positioned for the customer who actually walks in your door today — or for the customer who walked in five years ago.
These are different people. They want different things. And the brands and dealers that have figured that out will find H2 2026 considerably more productive than the ones still optimising for a segment that 46% of buyers — and falling — now occupy.
References
- Knight Frank India H1 2026 Report / New Kerala — https://www.newkerala.com/news/a/residential-sales-key-indian-cities-cross-171-lakh-138.htm
- Knight Frank H2 2026 Outlook / ANI News — https://aninews.in/news/business/premium-housing-demand-urbanisation-to-support-indias-realty-market-in-h2-2026-knight-frank20260709214155/
- BizzBuzz / Knight Frank Luxury vs Affordable Sales Data — https://www.bizzbuzz.news/markets/stock-market/luxury-housing-drive-sales-as-affordable-segment-slips-1397306
- Tiles Finders — 800×1600 Living Room Tiles India 2026 — https://tilesfinders.com/blog/800×1600-tiles-for-living-room-floor-indian-designer-picks-2026
- Mordor Intelligence — India Ceramic Tiles Market Porcelain CAGR — https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/india-ceramic-tiles-market
- IMARC Group — India Ceramic Tiles Large Format Trends — https://www.openpr.com/news/4389525/india-ceramic-tiles-market-to-reach-1-676-95-million-sq-meters
- Studio Matrx — Flooring Trends India 2026 — https://www.studiomatrx.org/guides/flooring-trends-india-2026
- Business Standard — Indian Tile Manufacturers Moving from Volume to Value — https://www.business-standard.com/content/specials/why-indian-tile-manufacturers-are-moving-from-volume-to-value-126040700824_1.html
