Finishes

NATURAL

As the name suggests, a Natural finish sees the material getting sourced from the quarry and cut into the specified size or slab format, to then be left rough, giving it the natural “rocky” look.

Different stones will obviously have different appearance, depending on their geological composition. This finish is generally used for outdoor cladding or cobblestones and not recommended for indoor use, as it can be hard to maintain and clean from debris.

In some cases, as in the above picture representing Baltic Brown, the material can be sealed or treated in order to make it resistant to water and other agents, and also to give it a less rough look.

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POLISHED

This finish is achieved by working the stone with abrasive treatments, to reach the maximum level of shininess. Once this buff level is reached, the stone will highlight all its colours and properties (as in the above pictured Cosmic Black), closing all its pores and therefore making it as impermeable as it’s naturally possible.

A polished finish makes the stone easy to clean and maintain, repelling all moisture and being nearly immune to atmospheric and chemical wear.

For this reason, this kind of finish is the most popular, and most widely used, for basically all indoor applications, such as kitchen counter tops, floor tiling, wall cladding or vanity tops. It is although not recommended for outdoor use, as it can be very slippery.

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HONED

The process to achieve a Honed finish is the same as the one for a Polished finish, but it’s being interrupted at a lower level of abrasion, giving the stone that matte, not glossy,  look which is widely used in bathrooms and more generally wall cladding.

Being kept at a lower level of buff, the pores are not entirely closed, and therefore a Honed finish is generally more porous and slightly more subject to staining than other finishes such as Polished or Leather.

Although, the low glossiness level ensures a higher friction on the surface, granting a less slippery area, widely preferred for spaces on where water is involved. Being a less refined finish, a Honed finish makes the stone appear lighter in colour and more dull than the glossy Polished finish, as you can see in the above pictured Nero Marquina, which is usually a black coloured stone when Polished, but more of a dark grey tone when in Honed finish.

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LEATHER

Leather finish is obtained by acting with a series of brushes on the stone surface (hence why some people call it Brushed finish), scraping off the softer areas of it and leaving the material with a slightly sheen and a textured finish, very soft at the touch and warm in colour.

This kind of finish is rather new, and it’s preferred to a Honed finish because it preserves the stone colours in a better way, and it closes the pores further, than a Honed finish, conferring the stone a higher stain and water resistance.

Visually, this finish has a shine lower than a Polished finish, but slightly higher than a Honed finish, with a soft textured look pleasant in the eye and at the touch. For a slightly higher polish, but a textured finish, I recommend looking at Caress finish, a combination of a Leather and a Polished finish.

The pictured material is a Sequoia Brown, a natural stone resembling wood.

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FLAMED

As the name suggest, a Flamed finish is achieved by bursting a high temperature flame on the stone surface, causing the weaker minerals to pop, leaving a rough, textured finish after a cooling process.

This finish can be applied to most of the granites, and eventually some harder marbles and limestones, and it will vary depending on the stone’s natural composition and crystallization. It is also often combined with a Brushed finish, in order to achieve a surface softer to the touch.

It’s a widely used finish for outdoors, because of the anti-slip properties it confers to the stone it’s applied to, but also indoors for areas on where there is presence of water (e.g: bathrooms)

The example above represents a well known material, Nero Impala, which is a very dark colour when in a Polished finish. In fact this finish, as all other textured finish, fades the stone’s natural colour, enhancing the mineral part of it.

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CARESS

If you like the textured finish of a Leather finish, but you are looking to achieve a shinier surface, this has to be your favourite option.

This finish is the result of a Leather finish followed by a Polished finish. This combination is probably my favourite, retaining the soft texture of Leather finish, but with enhanced, glossy areas on where the stone is naturally harder. It has porosity near to zero, coming from this combination of dense finishes, and it enhances the natural colours of the stone very well.

This finish is suitable for indoor use, but not very recommended for outdoor flooring as it can be very slippery. Just as the Leather finish, it can be applied to most granites (such as the Steel Grey pictured above) and to harder marbles and limestones.

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BUSH-HAMMERED

Bush-Hammered finish is achieved by repetitively hitting the surface of the stone, manually or mechanically, with a tool called bush hammer, a sort of meat tenderizing hammer for stone.

The effect is a rather uniform texture characterized by small indentations of different sizes, and it can be applied to nearly any stone thicker than 2CM, making the stone colours fade at a higher grade than a Honed finish.

Because of its irregular surface, this finish is very much suitable for outdoor areas, or any other space on where water is involved. The material pictured above is one of the most popular sandstones used in this finishes, Floresta.

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SANDBLASTED

The process to achieve this finish is very similar with the one for a Bush-hammered finish, but with the material being literally blasted with siliceous sand or steel shots, leaving the surface of the stone smoothly abraded.

The colour tones on materials with this finish are, as any other rough finish, slightly dulled and faded out, as it can be spotted on the above pictured Jura Beige.

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TUMBLED

A Tumbled finish is achieved by repetitively hitting the material with small rocks and abrasive grits,  in order to make the surface of the stone look weathered or distressed, smooth at the touch, but with some texture.

This finish is only used for tiles (cut-to-size) or small rocks, as it would be virtually impossible, and also pointless, to tumble whole slabs. If you like the look and feel of this finish and you would like to have the same for your counter top or floor, I recommend to have a look at Leather finish.

On the example above, a Travertine Noce has been treated with a Tumbled finish

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SPLIT FACE

Split Face is a finish which involves the use of hydraulic splitters, big machines which allow the stone to be “broken” along their natural veins, and then left with the split surface open.

Generally, the surface is subsequently being cut into smaller pieces which will be bonded together through the use of a net and some resin or adhesives, as it happened in the above pictured Silver Travertine. This is done to ensure a consistent thickness of the material to be used for external, or internal, wall cladding; conferring that natural, rocky look to the wall it’s stuck on.

This is although not the only option. For certain uses, such as flooring or external paving, the stone is cut into the required size and used as it is.

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SEALING

This is not exactly to be considered a type of finish, but just an additional treatment that can help with certain materials, especially if they have a finish like Honed.

The process involves the application of products defined sealants to the stone surface in order to close all the small pores that might cause higher water absorption characteristics or simply staining during the time it is being utilized. The process is generally recommended to be repeated  every 1-2 years depending on the material, and it could also be unnecessary if the stone has a low enough porosity, as Quartz does.

This final treatment could eventually alter the stone colours making them more vivid or darker, depending on the tone, but it’s definitely worth if you have a stone like Marble or Limestone in an area of your house which is hard-worn.