Natural stones
Natural stone is one of the first building materials that humans have learned to use. It has been used for already thousands of years, is being actively used today and will surely be used in the future also.
Natural stone is a good choice because of several wonderful properties:
- there isn't a comparable building material that has so wide range of colors, textures and structures.
- natural stone gives you flexibility, it is quarried as large blocks which gives the opportunity to cut to the desired measurements - from thin tiles to massive and complex details.
- natural stone has a long service of life, it is like a good wine that reaches it's best through years. It is easy to clean and floors that are even centuries old can look like new after honing.
- natural stone is universal in sense that it is a great choice both indoors and outdoors, moreover various products can be made for a lot of different applications.
- natural stone is ecological material because it exists in the nature in a form that is almost ready to be used as a building material. It doesn't require a lot of energy to make a ready product.
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natural stone is eco friendly material, it does not contain health harming substances. When exposed to fire no dangerous chemicals are released. Usually there is no need to cover natural stones with any chemicals (colours, lacquers). Utilization of natural stone is easy and requires little effort.
- natural stone is not an expensive building material even though the initial investment may not look like so. Considering maintenance costs throughout the expected life makes it much cheaper overall.
- natural stone is durable, granites and other hard stone materials may not show any sign of use even after centuries.
- natural stone will never go out of fashion, it has always been a solid and elegant building material and will remain this way also in the future.
Natural stones that are used as building materials can roughly be divided into two groups:
- Hard and very durable stones - igneous and metamorphic rocks (gneisses, migmatites, quartzites)
- Softer and a little less durable stones - metamorphic rocks (marbles) and sedimentary rocks (limestones, sandstones, slates)
A lot of natural stone providers talk only about granites, by which they mean all igneous and a lot of metamorphic rocks, and marbles, under which they categorize also limestones, travertines, serpentinites and various other types of stones.
If you want to be sure that the material offered is suitable for your purposes then you should take interest in the material and find out what is the type of the material and what kind of properties does it exactly have.