Stone

Stone

Nothing conveys a sense of permanence and timeless elegance like natural stone. Stone gets more beautiful with age as the colour mellows and the surface wears to a smooth patina. No two pieces of stone are ever identical, which is part of its unique and endearing charm.
Stone's natural hues and textures provide the perfect partnership with surrounding materials such as wood, steel and glass. It works in harmony with traditional and contemporary settings to create urban or rustic appeal.

Stone comes in an impressive variety of types, colors, surface textures and patterns from all over the world. The rapid progress in stone extraction and fabrication technologies made stone more affordable and accessible to the public. Today we are witnessing an ever-growing interest in utilizing stone as a building material among architects, commercial real estate developers and homeowners. If you are in the process of home remodeling, you are likely considering using natural stone tiles or solid stone in your home design.

Smoother stones like limestone, travertine, and marble are popular choices in the Gold Coast market.

Limestone: With its subtle patterning and typically pale neutral colors limestone has a strong contemporary appeal.

Limestone comprises a broad family of different types of stone, which vary significantly in character. Limestone is softer than igneous rocks such as granite; nevertheless it shares a timeless and monumental quality that is common to all types of stones. Some varieties of limestone are very hard and dense which makes them suitable for most interior and exterior applications including kitchen and bath countertops. Limestone offers sure footing when wet which makes limestone a good candidate for flooring in the bathroom. Aesthetically speaking limestone is usually pale in colour ranging in earthy shades from off-white to gold-hued and light gray. With its subtle textural pattern and neutral color palette limestone is especially welcome in contemporary style spaces.

Travertine: Like most other stone, travertine can also be traced back to the humble limestone. Its composition is much the same.
The evaporation of water in limestone caverns formed what we know today as travertine, in the form of stalactites and stalagmites.
Travertine has one advantage over other natural stones: it hardens with age and exposure. Due to its origins and 'structure', it can be processed in many ways, leading to different visual effects. Prior to polishing, the 'cracks' can be filled either in a matching colour or with clear poly-resin, or even in a contrasting colour, in each case changing the appearance quite dramatically.

Travertine is one of the world's oldest building materials and certainly has stood the test of time - just look at the Colosseum in Rome! Today it finds use in the form of floor tiles, wall cladding, steps and sills, for paving, as mantle pieces and surrounds for windows and doors.