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Beautiful stone products for your home

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Stones like marble and limestone can add value and a touch of class to your home.

If you're looking to give your home a formal, sophisticated feel, stone could be the way to go. While beautiful stone products are never cheap, the value that stone will ultimately add to your home makes the initial outlay worthwhile.

Marble and limestone are the most popular stone types chosen by home owners, says stone importer Jason of Gitani Stone - particularly marble and limestone in caramel tones shot through with white veins or 'lightning bolts'.

Stone can be used for benchtops, flooring, vanity tops, staircases and feature walls. Some people believe that a stone-like marble isn't suitable for high-use areas like benchtops, but that's not necessarily true, says Jason.

"You must deal with stonemasons who know what they are selling," he says. "We go to great lengths to have our stones independently tested for porosity, density, compression strength and so on, which enables us to give the right advice to the client as to which stone is suitable for their needs."

When it comes to flooring, book-matched stone can look stunning. "Book-matched flooring is when the veins of the slabs are installed in such a way that they create a 'butterfly' effect," says Jason.

"When we import material we import the whole block, which means that within the block each slab is almost identical. When they are polished we instruct the supplier to polish in such a way that it creates a book-matched effect - it's a bit like turning a page of a book and polishing each page you see."

Book-matched slabs are usually used on feature walls, or on bathroom walls and floors. However, book matching is expensive, as there is a large amount of wastage. It's also worth remembering that not all stone can be book matched - it depends on the characteristics of the stone.

For benchtops, Jason recommends budgeting for approximately $700 per square metre, including fabrication and installation. With flooring, the cost of pre-cut tiles, including installation, is generally around $250-$300 per square metre, and book-matched flooring cut from a 20m slab is around $700-$800 per square metre.

Stone is ideal for those with 'classic' aesthetic sensibilities. "The beauty of natural stone is that it never dates," says Jason.