Limestone vs Travertine Flooring: The pros and cons

limestone flooring

Limestone vs travertine

Limestone and travertine are both popular types of natural stone. Each stone makes for popular choices in material for the use in construction, home design and renovation.

While there are similarities between the two, and both are formed in similar natural circumstances (more on that in a minute), both travertine and limestone are unique and distinct stones in their own right.

If you’re looking to install stone flooring in your home and want to know what the pros and cons are of limestone vs travertine flooring, you’ve come to the right place. First, though, let’s define both of these types of stone.

Limestone

Limestone is a natural stone that forms at the bottom of water depositories and is formed mostly of the skeletal and shell-like fragments of marine organisms. Subjected to high amounts of pressure and a lot of heat, these minerals form into crystalline calcium carbonate rock. In both appearance and function, limestone can seem very similar to marble.

Travertine

Like limestone, travertine is made of compact calcium carbonate and also forms at the bottom of bodies of water and from the remains of aquatic creatures. The big difference between travertine and limestone in terms of development is that when extra heat and pressure is added to travertine it then forms subsequently into limestone. When the necessary heat and pressure is absent, travertine is left: made up of a compact composite of layers of different materials. Hence, travertine can be considered as a stone in a pre-limestone stage. 

Both limestone and travertine offer unique features and benefits when used as a building material, including flooring. 

So, how to choose between the two? Here are the pros and cons of limestone vs travertine flooring.

Stone colours and shades

This ‘pro’ and ‘con’ is entirely dependent on your preference of style and indesign. Limestone comes in brighter and lighter shades and colouring, while travertine tends to either be darker in shading or have deeper, darker streaks of colouring through it.

Of course, this being the case if you want to go down the road of marble-eque visuals, limestone offers you a more affordable option to do so. If you want to incorporate a bold colour scheme into your flooring travertine will be your better bet. Therefore the pros and cons of the colouring of limestone pavers vs travertine pavers will be entirely dependent on your personal preference and aesthetic choices.

Stone porousness

Travertine is a much more porous stone than limestone due to the differences in its formation. For that reason if you’re tossing up between a limestone vs travertine pool deck or you’re looking for a stone paver for an area that is likely to be exposed to excess liquid or high amounts of traffic in the house, limestone may be the smarter option. It’s a durable stone that is likely to stand up to high foot traffic exposure and resist staining and discolouring over time. Travertine, being softer, is more susceptible to this sort of ‘wear’. However, with proper treatment, polishing and maintenance, travertine is also more than capable of offering long-term, high quality flooring.

Stone value

When trying to assess the value of different stones such as travertine and limestone by objective metrics, it’s important to consider three different factors:

  • Limestone vs travertine price
  • Limestone vs travertine longevity 
  • Limestone vs travertine maintenance costs

Of course the lower the price and ongoing costs, and the higher the longevity, the more valuable a long-term investment a stone is. 

On the one hand, a con of limestone is that it is more expensive than travertine. On the other hand, a con of travertine is that it requires more maintenance and does not last as well for as long.

Cleaning and maintenance 

Like with most considerations on this list, choosing between limestone and travertine is not so much a determination of which is better, but which pros and cons you personally value over the other. When it comes to long-term maintenance, travertine requires both more intense and more regular maintenance to keep it sealed and resistant. Unfilled travertine, if such stone is your style, can be difficult to keep clean due to the crevices and pock marks that are inherent in the stone. On the flip side however, being the darker of the two stones, travertine does not show up dirt as easily or quickly as limestone. Limestone, while less porous when sealed and easily cleanable, does require more consistent cleaning to keep looking sparkly, shiny and squeaky clean.

Versatility in application

There’s plenty to love about travertine, especially when it comes to splashbacks and wall cladding, but in terms of flooring versatility limestone’s higher durability and lower porousness takes the cake. If the application in mind for your new stone flooring is a pool deck or bathroom pavers/flooring, limestone is the smarter and better long-term solution. Even something like underfloor heating is much more suitable for limestone than travertine.

Another important point to bear in mind with pool paving and stone surrounds is that because travertine absorbs more water, if you live in an area cold enough for the stone to freeze during winter you could damage the stone as the water expands. In the hotter months, additional water retained by travertine can produce more glaring sun refractions than limestone would.

A last word on limestone vs travertine flooring

As you can see there are clearly pros and cons to using both limestone and travertine. Travertine offers home-owners a unique, darker patterned aesthetic, while limestone is less porous and more suitable for bathroom, kitchen or pool-surrounding flooring.

At the end of the day the best stone for you will depend on your preferences, budget, priorities and application. As always, the team at Euro Marble is here to help you with your stone-related questions, queries and conundrums. Want to drill down more on the pros and cons of limestone vs travertine? Or do you want to walk through your specific home renovation? Give us a call on (02) 8585 2999 to chat about all the above and more.

Top 7 Natural Stone Tiles for Minimalist Kitchens

statuario marble kitchen benchtop and cooktop

Minimalist kitchens are extraordinarily popular in modern-style homes. From the inherent simplicity in the design to the ease with which you can create a luxurious feel, there’s a lot to love about minimalist homes.

While there are rooms in your home where it may be necessary to compromise a bit of function for fashion, your kitchen simply isn’t one of them. A minimalist kitchen design offers the perfect combination of stylishness and clutter-free, organised cleanliness that we all strive for in the hive of activity that is our kitchen.

So what construction material is best for a minimalist kitchen? There’s simply no question in our mind that natural stone tiles are the way to go.

Why natural stone?

Natural stone tiles offer both a beautiful and a durable solution for your home and especially for your kitchen. No other material is able to offer both attributes with such balance and finesse. 

Natural stone, being quarried from the ground directly, offers a uniquely earthly feel whilst retaining a sophisticated elegance. Yet, if you’re a brass tax kind of person, rest assured that natural stone offers a pretty smart long-term investment.

The hardiness and durability makes natural stone perfect for kitchens in particular where it will be exposed to a lot of activity, not to mention liquid. 

How to incorporate natural stone in your minimalist kitchen

Stone is versatile in both application and function which makes it uniquely suited to a variety of contexts. Some of the most common applications of natural stone tiles in a kitchen include:

Top natural stone tiles for minimalist kitchens

There are a LOT of varieties of natural stone to choose from. Even if you’re aiming for a minimalist kitchen sink to match your minimalist benchtop there are still tons of options to choose from. To help make your life easier, we’ve listed 7 of the top natural stone tiles to consider for your minimalist kitchen. 

  1.  Bianco Perlino Marble

Let’s start with a classic, minimalist stone. Bianco Perlino Marble is immensely popular thanks to its intricate, distinct veining and graceful, bright shading. If you’re aiming for a luminous kitchen full of bouncing light and a feeling of airy spaciousness, Bianco Perlino will perfectly compliment a minimalist design. This stunning marble stone is particularly good for use in flooring as its simplicity won’t overwhelm your minimalist aspirations. Yet if you want to use it in your kitchen benchtop or as a splashback, it works stylistically just as well. 

  1.  Calacatta Belgia Marble

From one marble stone to another… Calacatta Belgia is your classic marble-looking stone. Threaded with smokey veining amidst subtle yet powerful colours, this royal look will bring to life a minimalist kitchen without becoming overbearing. These natural stone tiles are particularly good if you’re worried that choosing white or silver stones will appear too plain but that going for a stone with a busy design or dark veining will lose the minimalist flavour. Calacatta Belgia is famous for its captivating beauty and its versatility in application. We particularly like it for flooring and kitchen countertops because it looks best in large slabs or big tiles.

  1.  Mystic Black Granite

Let’s swing to the other side and leave behind the whites and greys for a moment. Just because you’ve gone down the minimalist route doesn’t mean that you have to stay with the lighter colours. Mystic Black granite brings a dark, bold visual element to a kitchen which, applied tastefully, can enhance the elegant simplicity of a kitchen. A granite kitchen countertop or benchtop–especially in the form of an island–will anchor your minimalist kitchen design with a spectacular statement that will drop jaws to the floor… a floor which would also look stunning in Mystic Black.

  1.  Mocca Limestone

Designers and homeowners who are not such fans of minimalist design styles often use words like ‘cold’ and ‘impersonal’. We couldn’t disagree more! In fact, nothing proves such naysayers wrong as a Mocca limestone incorporating minimalist kitchen. With shades of swirling cream and ivory, Mocca has a warming look to it that manages to thread the needle of being both visually homely and luxurious. Cladding your kitchen with these natural stone tiles will create a genuine feeling of cosiness and comfort. 

  1.  Silver Travertine

Silver travertine stone tiles offer your minimalist kitchen a sense of depth and subtle complexity without ruining the overall effect of contemporary minimalism. This steel grey material echoes the cleanliness and ruthlessly smooth look of concrete whilst adding in nuanced silver, green and occasionally brown shading to give your kitchen a personal, homely touch. Our team particularly likes incorporating silver travertine in kitchen countertops where it can act as a central focal point with its eye-popping beauty without distracting from the overall kitchen design. 

  1.  Blue dreams marble

Now we turn to a coloured marble: Blue dreams marble. Blue dreams is a truly breathtaking stone: The vivid blue and creamy brown shadings evoke feelings of golden and sapphire ocean sunsets. If you want to inject a little bit of extra personality into your kitchen, we highly recommend considering blue dreams for a marble splashback or marble benchtop. The graceful design and calming colouring will hero the rest of the kitchen in a subtle, dignified manner.  

  1.  Royal White marble

For our last natural stone tile suggestion for your minimalist kitchen, we’ve gone all out; and by all out, we mean all white. Royal white marble is amongst the most majestic of natural stones and building materials found anywhere. Period. Effortlessly luxurious with its beautiful shimmering streaks of silver, royal white marble is the perfect choice for a kitchen that is meant to be as white as white can be. Incorporate this elegant marble in your floors, walls, benchtops or splashbacks. It makes for a fresh and stunning kitchen full of understated and impressive character. 

Let’s design your minimalist kitchen together

Euro Marble are experts in all things stone. Our highly skilled team are extremely experienced in helping homeowners and builders find the right natural stone tiles to suit their desires, their homes and their budgets. 
Nothing says pure minimalist kitchen design elegance more than natural stone and no one knows natural stone better than the team at Euro Marble. Contact us today and let’s see what we can do for you and your kitchen.

Light Marble Flooring Ideas for Your Home

Crema Marfil Flooring

Marble is amongst the most popular choices of natural stone for flooring in homes. The elegant sophistication of this stunning material has been and will continue to remain in style for generations to come.

If you’re considering marble flooring for your home, there are many, many options and opportunities for customisation. While many people choose darker coloured marbles to really help make the floors in their house pop, the classically lighter marble has always been the more frequently chosen. In this article we’ll outline some of the most popular and best marble flooring design styles for light marble.

White, light and bright

White marble offers a lot by way of design and functionality. If you’re a fan of minimalist and scandanavian design but don’t want to go down the dark, bold colour scheme path an open concept white marble floor is the way to go. The white stone will reflect the natural light that enters a room and will help make your entire house brighter. Keeping an all-white tone of marble across the space allows you to choose whether you want larger tiles or smaller but more intricately patterned marble stones, which takes us to our next design idea.

Add some mosaic to your marble

If you love the look and feel of white marble but want to add some depth, you can opt for a mosaic marble floor. Marble is extremely versatile, especially stunning Italian marble, and can make for a stunning display in all manner of patterns: herringbone, hexagonal, fish scales or oriental. While more intricate mosaic designs can make your floor seem busier, the light marble shading will keep it from being distracting or overwhelming for you and your guests.

Wide and veiny

Carrara marble is extraordinarily popular for use as stone floor tiles. The grey-silver cloud-like veins that run through this stunning stone break up the whiteness and lightness, and infuse an element of depth into the floor. An excellent idea for incorporating this marble into your home is by using large, flat and square tiles throughout the entirety of the room, be it a living area or a bedroom. The grey veins will not only look like a million bucks but they will often even play with your optical perceptions and make the room feel like it’s growing out from under you and lengthening. 

Checked black and white tiles

Many people don’t realise this but marble comes in a whole variety of colours, not just white and grey. One of these colours is black. Now, we promised from the top that we’ll be sticking to light marble colors for flooring but one way of introducing a bit of a funky yet elegant design into your lighter flooring is by strewing some (small or large) black tiles in a checkered pattern amongst the white. The benefit of this style is that it adds a contrast of marble colouring while keeping the iconic royal look that everyone loves.

Stripes and sheathes

Striped marble tiles or sheaths can liven up a plain marble stone floor effortlessly. Much like the natural milky veins of marble, particular types of this stone offer even more variety and boldness in the overlaying design. Take for example our exclusive licorice marble. The longitudinal lines create a rather striking pattern without sacrificing the lightness of shade or the modernistic look. Striations in marble offer a lot of opportunity for you to add a bit of colour and character in your marble flooring, all while keeping it tasteful and seamless.

Light blue and white

Another colour option, if you want to add something other than white, grey or black, is blue marble. While some home owners love the dreamy light blues inherent in this particular natural stone, others prefer to incorporate light blue marble flooring within a white tiled border. Elegantly arrayed this bright style will add eye-popping colour without sacrificing the airiness you’re wanting to achieve by opting for light stone. Blue marble is particularly well suited for integration in bathrooms and laundries.

Earthy brown marble

Brown marble might not seem intuitively like a lighter flooring option but, like all marble, the brown stones come in a variety of shades. Light brown marble arrayed in large tiles across a room can achieve a unique balance of warmth with its earthy undertones and brightness with its shiny, smooth appearance. If you’re a big fan of the wooden look, there’s even a type of marble stone called teak wood that is sure to have you head over heels. 

Go for gold marble

If you want your marble flooring to look and feel fit for a king, few ideas can go toe to toe with a gold and white marble flooring pattern. Pure luxury in execution, gold and white are perfectly complementary colours of marble that can be set out in exquisitely complex patterns or can be tastefully designed with minimalism in mind. Either way, a golden marble look will gleam in the sun and keep your flooring light and fresh looking.

Conclusion

Thanks to the wondrous nature of marble stone flooring and the many differences in design, tone, shading and colour, there are plenty of light marble flooring ideas for your home. Whether you’re looking for something unique or want a style that’s tried and tested, there’s a ton of variety that is bound to look amazing however you integrate it.

Would you like to discuss any of the ideas outlined above in more detail? Or do you want to explore some entirely new and different ideas? The Euro Marble team can’t wait to dig into the details of all things marble stone flooring. So give us a call on (02) 8585 2999 today!