HS Code 6910: Classifying Ceramic Sinks, Basins and Sanitary Ware

If you're landing here searching "6910 hsn code" or "hs code ceramic sink", you're probably staring at a commercial invoice for a bathroom fixture and trying to work out whether it's ceramic, china, porcelain, or something else entirely dressed up to look like it. This is a short, focused answer.

What Sits Inside Heading 6910

HS heading 6910 covers ceramic sinks, wash basins, wash basin pedestals, baths, bidets, water closet pans, flushing cisterns, urinals, and similar sanitary fixtures. That's the scope. If the item is a fixed bathroom or kitchen fitting made of ceramic material, it almost certainly lives here.

The heading doesn't care about size, glaze colour, or brand. It cares about two things: what the item is (a listed fixture type) and what it's made of (ceramic).

The Two Subheadings: 6910.10 vs 6910.90

Once you've confirmed the item belongs in 6910, there's only one more decision to make: is it porcelain or china, or is it another ceramic body.

That's the entire split. There's no third bucket. If it's ceramic and fits the fixture list, it's either 6910.10 or 6910.90, and the deciding factor is the ceramic body itself, not the finish, the design, or the country of manufacture.

Porcelain and china bodies are typically fired at higher temperatures and are denser and more vitrified than standard stoneware or earthenware sanitary bodies. If your supplier's spec sheet or technical data describes the body material, that's your fastest route to the right subheading. When it doesn't, ask. Guessing here isn't worth the risk of a queried entry.

Worked Example: Running the Decision Tree

Here's the logic as a simple checklist you can run against any invoice line before you file:

def classify_6910(item_type, material, ceramic_body=None):
    fixture_types = [
        "sink", "wash_basin", "basin_pedestal", "bath",
        "bidet", "wc_pan", "flushing_cistern", "urinal"
    ]

    if item_type not in fixture_types:
        return "not_6910"

    if material == "plastic":
        return "chapter_39"
    if material == "steel" or material == "stainless_steel":
        return "7324"
    if material != "ceramic":
        return "check_manually"

    if ceramic_body in ("porcelain", "china"):
        return "6910.10"
    else:
        return "6910.90"

Feed it the fixture type, the base material, and (for ceramic items) the body type, and you get the answer. No ambiguity, no judgement call left hanging.

Now put your own volume through it. Say you move 40 sanitary ware shipments a month. If even one in ten gets queried because the code on the invoice doesn't match the physical description of the goods, that's 4 entries a month sent back for correction. At roughly an hour each to research the item, amend the entry, and resubmit, that's 4 hours a month lost to a single heading. Multiply that by however many product lines you classify without a checklist like this one, and the case for getting it right at entry, not after the query, writes itself.

Where Forwarders Get It Wrong

The most common mistake isn't inside 6910 at all. It's assuming everything that looks like a sink is ceramic.

• Plastic sanitary ware, including acrylic baths, plastic wash basins, and polymer shower trays, falls under chapter 39, not 6910. Ceramic and plastic sit in completely different chapters because the tariff classifies by material of construction, not by function or appearance.
• Steel sanitary fixtures, including stainless steel sinks and basins, fall under heading 7324, again because the material governs.
• Within 6910 itself, the only material question left is porcelain/china versus other ceramic. Don't overthink glaze, colour, or brand marketing language on the packaging. None of that changes the code.

A quick sanity check before you commit a code: read the material description on the commercial invoice and the packing list, and check they agree. "Ceramic basin" and "porcelain basin" are not interchangeable phrases, and if your supplier's documentation is inconsistent between the two, that inconsistency is exactly what a customs query will land on.

Check It Before You File

Heading 6910 is short and self-contained, but the discipline is the same one that trips up every other heading: confirm the material before you confirm the fixture type, and don't let the invoice's marketing language stand in for a technical spec.

If you want a second pair of eyes on a specific classification before you file, run it through the HS code checker. It's built for exactly this kind of quick, before-you-submit sanity check.