What is Natural Stone? Where Do We Use It?

natural stone tiles

What is Natural Stone? Where Do We Use It?

Natural stone is a highly sustainable construction material. The supplies of natural stone on Earth are abundant, vast, and go back millions of years. However, the regeneration of stone isn’t as freely visible as the regeneration of trees. It’s a continuous development with a natural stone tiles having an enduring lifespan.

Natural stone is precisely that, natural. There aren’t any alterations to these stones like other concrete products. As a natural product, stone products are eco-friendly and recyclable. Crush natural stones and use them for aggregates or natural stone pavers.

Every piece of natural stone has a distinct blend of tones and color, which customizes your driveway or garden walkway, where each piece matches and is reasonably characterless. Unlike concrete, there’s no pigment in the color of natural stone, making it more striking. Natural stone veneers feature imperfections and tones from thousands of years ago.

Natural stone will keep its appearance for a long time, unlike concrete, which results from composite aggregate mixes that get exposure after a couple of years of trafficking.

Natural stone paving is sturdy and frost-resistant. Natural stone doesn’t wear down, uncovering aggregates such as concrete. Excavated right from the Earth’s crust, each piece of natural stone is unique. The only treatment they require is shaping into different sizes, finishes, and forms.

Natural stone has plenty to love. There’s no doubt about that. Take some time to learn about the characteristics of natural stone. You’ll value it even more.

Natural stone is one of the most well-liked products for driveways, patios, countertops, flooring, walls, and much more. Marble, onyx, granite, slate, limestone, and other natural stones come in a vast array of designs and colors to satisfy any indoor or outdoor design project.

Usage for Natural Stone

Created by years of subterranean pressure and heat, natural stones possess tremendous strength and beauty. Natural stones are:

  • Fire and heat resistant.
  • Etch and stain-resistant Scratch & chip resistant.
  • Stain & etch resistant Chip and stretch resistant.
  • It lasts a lifetime with accurate care.

Because mining is a part of the natural stone process, each one is different from bathroom vanities to kitchen countertops to natural stone flooring to wall stone tile. Natural stone turns any surface into a brilliant masterpiece.

Natural Stone indicates numerous products excavated from the Earth. These stones are more than just rocks since they are for renovations and building materials. These products include travertine, granite, slate, limestone, marble, travertine, onyx, sandstone, adoquin, etc. Natural stones are hand-picked from the most consistent, top sources for beauty and resilience.

Natural stone products vary in color, texture, and composition, even with chunks from the same source. Having these stones is typically thought of as an advantage, lending itself to unique designs and different vivid applications.

Where to Use Natural Stone

Natural stone is mostly for large-scale building jobs and informal applications like government structures and places of worship. Also, it is a part of road construction and monuments. For home construction, brick and wood have been the customary choice. There has been an increasing trend recently in using natural stone for home construction projects and home renovations. Popular places in the home for natural stone applications are fireplaces, countertops, entryways, atriums, bathrooms, floors, and numerous other surfaces.

Natural stone tiles are vulnerable to staining and require sealing after installation. The reason for this is the fact that natural stone is porous. A sealer masks those pores, making the stone less prone to stains and simpler to clean.  While some sealers do last forever, the recommendation is to reseal every 12 to 24 months as part of your natural stone care schedule for an average sealer.

The Purpose of Using Natural Stone

Natural stone delivers peacefulness, tranquility, and attractiveness. There are also several advantages to using natural stone in your residence. Natural stone products are sturdier than several artificial products, usually lasting for years with little maintenance. There aren’t any concerns regarding exposure to damaging chemicals in the house or discharged into the air during disposal or production with natural stone. Why put money and time into an imitation? Natural stone is the real thing that fake products try to copy.

Different Kinds of Natural Stone

Natural stone products are available in several types, including granite, slate, marble, travertine, onyx, quartzite, sandstone, and limestone.

Granite

For maintenance-free sturdiness and sophistication, there’s nothing better than granite. Its incredible density and strength make granite the ideal choice for substantial structural projects such as supports, walls, and monuments. Even though it’s the toughest of structural stones, the fantastic assortment of natural patterns and mineral-rich colors deliver an ornamental value too. Granite is perfect for natural stone countertops, flooring, exterior decorations, and vanities.

You’ll find granite in bridges, monuments, buildings, paving, and numerous other exterior jobs. Indoors use granite tiles for stair treads, flooring, countertops, and several other ornamental and everyday projects. Granite is a popular selection because it’s a reputable material used in jobs to create an impression of resilience, grace, and lasting quality.

Slate

Slate breaks naturally into gorgeous textured layers since it comes from hundreds of years of compression and sedimentary deposits.  The different shades of slate products like lavender, yellow, pink, brown, dark gray, and more could happen in the same stone piece. Stain-resistant and resilient, slate products are frequently in cladding, flooring, and landscaping.

Marble

Famous for its endless texture, gloss, and texture, as well as a rich assortment of gorgeous colors, marble could go anywhere in a living space. Available in veined varieties and solids, sculpted or carved marble comes in several forms, making it a very multipurpose stone. As a luxury symbol, current technology provides attractive marble products even to homeowners on a budget.

Marble, with its natural warmth, delivers a refined element to the installation or remodeling space. Its inherently random look, engineering features, and simplicity of care make it a top choice for wainscots, floors, vanity tops, wall claddings, and tabletops. Several types of marble are suitable for wet area installation, which encompasses this natural stone’s flexibility to include showers and tub decks.

Travertine

Travertine brings unique, rich character to a host of outdoor and indoor building jobs. Many property owners appreciate travertine for its distressed, banded, pitted look. Hot spring water formed the veins and designs, permeating through underground limestone. For interior usage, filling travertine with grout, cement, or resin is frequently done. The last process is to seal the spot, making a stain-resistant, smooth surface.

Quartz

Glittering and sparkling with little quartz crystals, quartz is a stone-like slate with tremendous strength and a moderate grained texture. Different mineral content generates numerous color variants from the demure gray, beige, white to more daring shades of pink or purple.

Use quartz for stone wall tiles and natural stone veneers. The non-skid surface makes it an ideal contender for outdoor and indoor flooring, including places exposed to the elements and heavy traffic.

Limestone

The soft, gentle tones of limestone are ideal for today’s comfortable and casual lifestyles. Available in shades of tan and soft beige, either honed or polished, limestone is perfect for fireplaces, bathrooms, flooring, and countertops.

Ceramic Tiles vs. Natural Stone Tiles

The most vital difference between ceramic tile and natural stone tiles is natural stone is made by nature, and ceramics are human-made. Many human-made ones can’t compare in resilience to natural ones. While broken ceramic tiles typically need replacing, natural stone usually necessitates little restoration if scuffed or discolored. Other differences include:

Ceramic

  • Uniform composition
  • Acid-resistant
  • Lightweight and thin, low absorbency, ridged backing
  • Have only one basic finish and almost no edge finishes
  • Ceramic tiles come in restricted sizes, and patterns are geometric and equal.

Natural Stone

  • Distinct composition
  • It varies from category to category.
  • Acid sensitivity differs from stone to stone.
  • Have a complete range of finishes such as honed, leather, rugged, old-fashioned, tumbled, and more. Various edge types, such as bull-nosed, beveled, etc., are feasible.
  • No restricted sizes. Available in big slabs as vast as 125′ X 75.’

Where to Use Natural Stone

Property owners use natural stone on practically every surface outside and inside the residence, like facades, garden walkways, patios, kitchen countertops, bathrooms, flooring, vanity tops, fireplaces, and wall cladding.

Natural stone lovers are allies to geologists and are thankful to these scientists for their stylish natural stone firepit, natural stone backsplash, and natural stone retaining wall. These individuals share a like zeal for a twinkle of garnet and the racy glitter of marble. The two disciplines have separate ways of thinking and organizing about stone, making sense since humans possess an interest in various things.

Geologists examine rocks to discover more about what happened in Earth’s past. Every day, folks value rocks since they’re beautiful, useful, and practical. Nonetheless, a little geology could put some light on why or where to use a natural stone. Also, geology helps people appreciate that each stone slab gives a tiny peek into hidden time and the spectacular forces that affect the planet.

Relationships Between Different Stone Types

In the geology world, all stones are relatives of each other. Over substantial periods, any rock could turn into a new rock if it becomes squeezed, melted, eroded, or uplifted. That’s what’s been occurring throughout Earth’s history. Knowing the relationships between various stones could make it simpler to see why some share comparable traits. Also, it helps people appreciate the incidents that gave growth to all those beautiful slabs in the showrooms.

With flooring materials, none is more magnificent or refined than natural stone. The phrase “natural stone” suggests an assortment of mountain-born mineral elements that stand different from any manufactured or synthetic stone materials.

Typical natural stone flooring types are marble, granite, slate, limestone, travertine, and sandstone. Every one of them has vaguely different characteristics. It’s vital to know the features of the stone flooring tile you’re buying so you can decide whether it’s right for a particular spot.

As you shop for natural stone tiles, there are numerous general factors that you must consider.

Indoor vs. Outdoor Rating

Some natural stone flooring materials are more appropriate for outdoor usage than others. Many factors will decide if a material is right in an open-air environment.

Oxidation

The formation of natural stone materials takes place beneath the Earth over thousands of years and frequently contain a host of contrasting elements. Occasionally iron appears in these materials, which could exhibit amber and bright red hues on the stone’s surface. The issue in an outdoor setting is that those bits of iron could oxidize, a procedure usually known as rusting. This demise could cause the whole tile to deteriorate over time.​

Advantages of Using Natural Stone Flooring

There are several practical and aesthetic reasons why natural stone flooring could be an excellent choice: 

  • Every stone is a distinct creation of the Earth, causing each flooring application to be unique. Each floor is entirely different.
  • The stone’s mountain-born features could help offer living spaces an eternal and direct connection to the natural world, not like any other building material. 
  • Stone tiles are nonpolluting, eco-green, natural pieces. Buying local stones could cut down on the environmental effect of transport.

When getting natural stone flooring products, it’s vital to research and know the characteristics of the material you are purchasing. Ask if it is right for your particular application and how much upkeep it will need.

Ask us at EleganceUs if you have questions and completely research the natural stone before making a buy.

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