The choice of finish is a key factor to consider and plays a crucial role in determining both the style and practicality of the material. Depending on the space the stone is going in and what you want to achieve with the stone, the finish needs to be considered. As a leading stone importer in NSW, Lithic Australia understand the importance of selecting the right finish for each project. Let’s better understand the reasoning why you would pick one finish over another and find one that’s right for your project.
The finishes covered in this article are:
Kremali
Polished: Elevate to Elegance
Polished finishes have been popular for centuries and used on builds like Buckingham Palace, St. Peters Basilica, and The Louvre. This makes them a popular choice for interior spaces seeking a refined and luxurious aesthetic. Achieved through meticulous grinding and buffing processes, polished surfaces boast a glossy, reflective sheen that deepens the colour and establishes formality. Commonly utilized for countertops, flooring, and walls, this finish brings out the rich depth of the stone more than any other finish. Polished surfaces are naturally denser and more resistant to staining.
Melotti Selva
Honed: Embrace Subtlety
Honed finishes offer a more subdued alternative to polished surfaces, boasting a smooth, matte appearance that exudes understated elegance. Achieved through grinding processes that result in a uniform texture, honed stones retain their natural beauty while minimizing glare and fingerprints. Similar to polished, honed is ideal for spaces such as walls, flooring, bathrooms, and countertops but with less of a reflective finish- this means fingerprints or grime won’t be as obvious. This finish is very forgiving in high traffic areas and doesn’t require the same level of maintenance a polished surface can.
Oscura
Leathered: Textured and Warm
To achieve a leathered finish, diamond-tipped brushes are used to run along a honed surface. The brushes subtly remove material from the honed surface, cutting more into softer areas and less into hard. This creates a gentle undulation in the surface that imbues the natural stone with a tactile allure, resembling the soft, supple feel of leather. Popular for countertops, backsplashes, and accent walls, leathering offers practical benefits, effectively hiding water spots and fingerprints. Additionally, it closes the natural pores of the stone, enhancing its resistance to stains compared to a honed surface.
Basalt
Sawn: Celebrate Raw Beauty
Achieved through cutting the stone with saws or blades, sawn surfaces boast a rugged, unfinished appearance, leaving the stone in its rawest processed form, adding a touch of authenticity to outdoor spaces. This finish appears only on our Basalt due to its commercial advantages. From paving stones to retaining walls, sawn finishes are prized for their durability, making them a favourite choice for commercial landscape design and architectural elements.
El Mar
Calibrated: Precise and Uniform
Calibrating uses the same finishing technique as honing but leaves the stone quite a bit lighter in colour and not as smooth, taking the stone just past the point where you stop seeing saw marks. Calibrated finishes epitomize precision and uniformity, offering stone surfaces that are meticulously cut and machined to consistent thicknesses and dimensions. This finish is particularly well-suited for large-scale projects such as flooring and walling, where seamless installation and uniformity are paramount. By eliminating variations in thickness and edges, calibrated stones facilitate ease of installation while maintaining a sleek, contemporary aesthetic.
Saltbush
Brushed: Enhance Natural Grain and Texture
Brushed finishes harness the natural grain and texture of stone, imparting a gently weathered appearance through abrasive brushing techniques. This finish enhances slip resistance while accentuating the stone’s inherent beauty, making it an ideal choice for outdoor applications such as pool areas and patios. A brushed finish is one you’ll usually find on a travertine, marble, or limestone, as the stone responds well to the brushing.
An interesting example of brushing is in our marble Saltbush. Due to the quality of its microporosity, the brushed finish gives it a high slip resistance while keeping a much smoother feel and maintaining its colour/patterning. With its rustic charm and tactile appeal, brushed stones keep the authentic look of the stone intact while allowing use in outdoor spaces, inviting inhabitants to connect with the natural environment. Brushing is often used in conjunction with sandblasting, bush hammering or flaming to bring the natural patina of the stone back after an aggressive process.
Silver Travertine
Tumbled: Evoke Old-World Charm
Tumbled finishes evoke the timeless beauty of aged stone, featuring rounded edges reminiscent of centuries-old cobblestones. The tumbled edge is achieved through tumbling stones in abrasive drums but as tumbling only affects the edges of the stone/paver, it is usually paired with a brushed finish to give the surface the same aesthetic to the edges.
Karacrem
Flamed: Unabashed Authenticity
Flamed finishes combine texture while maintaining the stones original colour and patterning, offering stone surfaces that are both visually striking and resistant to wear and tear. This finish is achieved by subjecting the stone to high temperature flames followed by rapid cooling, resulting in a rough, textured surface with excellent slip resistance. Commonly used for outdoor paving and cladding, flamed stones withstand the elements with grace while imparting a distinctive, rugged aesthetic to landscapes and architectural facades.
Maribor
Bush Hammered: From Rough to Refined
Bush hammered finishes encompass a range of textures, from rough and rustic to finely textured and refined. Achieved through the use of a bush hammer tool, this finish creates small indentations on the stone surface, adding depth and visual interest, similar to a sand blasting but with the added option of picking the intensity of sandblasting. Available in micro, fine, normal, rough, and brushed. Whether used for exterior walls, paving, or architectural features, bush hammered stones lend a unique tactile quality to your surface. Bush hammering leaves the stone surface consistent and free of undulation. Often used in stones of variable density where sandblasting will cause too much variation.
mermerli
Sandblasted: Practical and Durable
The sandblasted finish achieves a textured surface by propelling abrasive materials such as sand or grit against the stone at high velocity. This process removes surface layers to expose the underlying texture and grain of the stone, resulting in a matte finish with subtle variations in colour and depth. Sandblasted stones are prized for their natural aesthetic and slip-resistant properties, making them suitable for a wide range of indoor and outdoor applications, from pool surrounds to landscape elements. Sandblasting does create a muting of colour and pattern which some people prefer but is also sometimes unavoidable in applications where slip resistance is required.
Breccia
Sandblasted & Brushed: Uniting Texture with Sophistication
A combination of Sandblasting and then ending with a brushed finish. Sandblasted and brushed finishes marry texture with sophistication, offering stone surfaces that are both visually striking and refined. This finish involves blasting the stone with abrasive materials to create a textured and slip resistant appearance, followed by brushing to smooth the surface slightly. Ideal for both indoor and outdoor applications, this finish combines the slip resistance from sand blasting while maintaining some of the original colouring and pattern of the stone with the brushing. Sandblasted and brushed stones strike a perfect balance between ruggedness and elegance, adding depth and character to any space.
Viridian
Hydro Blasted: Combine Aesthetic with Practicality
Hydro blasting will give the feel and slip resistance of sandblasting without the loss of colour and pattern. Hydro blasted finishing utilizes high-pressure water jets to create a textured surface on stone, offering a unique blend of visual interest and tactile appeal. This technique gently removes loose granules off the stone surface while preserving the natural integrity of the stone, resulting in a finish that is both functional and aesthetically pleasing. Featured exclusively in our Soldanella and Viridian stones from Switzerland. Hydro blasted stones have previously been used in in both residential and commercial settings, where they add depth and character to walls, facades, and outdoor landscapes, inviting touch and exploration.
Maribor
Chiselled: Traditional Craftmanship
The chiselled finish imparts a rugged and handcrafted appearance to stone surfaces, evoking the craftsmanship of traditional stonemasonry. Achieved by chiselling the edges and surface of the stone, this finish showcases irregular contours and rough textures that enhance the natural character of the material. Chiselled stones are often used for accent walls, fireplace surrounds, and outdoor features such as garden borders and retaining walls, where they add a rustic charm to the landscape.
Meteora
Rock Face/Split Face: Raw & Rugged
The rock face finish showcases the natural layers and textures of stone by splitting it along its natural grain. This technique reveals rough and uneven surfaces with varying depths, creating a visually dynamic effect that highlights the inherent beauty of the material. This shows the stone in its most raw form, similar to what you would find in nature. Rock face stones are commonly used for exterior cladding, feature walls, and architectural details, where they lend a sense of depth and dimension to facades and landscapes, transforming ordinary surfaces into works of art.
Porphyry
Natural: From Earth to Art
The natural finish highlights the inherent charm and texture of stone without any extra treatment or modification. Essentially, it involves leaving the stone untreated. It’s sold just as it’s extracted from the quarry after being cut into the desired shape. The appearance ultimately relies on the stone’s unique qualities and how it’s extracted. This finish is ideal for cladding and cobblestones, as showcased on our Porphyry cobblestone.
Izola
Scored: Secular and Daring
The scored finish adds visual interest and texture to stone surfaces by cutting shallow grooves or lines into the surface. This decorative technique creates geometric patterns or intricate designs that enhance the aesthetic appeal of the stone. Scored stones are commonly used for public pavescapes, walls, and architectural features, where they serve as focal points or design elements that elevate the overall ambience of the space.
From the timeless elegance of polished surfaces to the rugged charm of bush-hammered textures, the finish of a stone doesn’t just have to be practical, it can strike a balance between enhancing the beauty of the stone whilst also being functional for your project. Whether seeking sophistication, subtlety, or rustic authenticity, there exists a finish to suit every aesthetic preference and practical requirement. By exploring the diverse range of stone finishes available, you can unlock endless possibilities for creating spaces that are as visually captivating as they are functional and enduring.
