For smart flooring shoppers, learning about stone is a natural

Natural stone is the world’s oldest floor covering. No flooring product is more beautiful, more organic – more earthy. Knowing about this flooring material can open up exciting, natural choices in your shopping quest.

Natural stone was ancient man and woman’s design element, a key building material and an original vehicle of creativity.

Natural stone is durable. It exhibits a rich, organic, beautiful surface and has a confident, timeless “presence” in any home.

Rub your hand across any natural stone product and you can feel the eons of time it took to produce this natural wonder of our planet.

How was it produced? The process started millions of years ago, deep in the earth.

Heat and pressure combined to form blocks of natural stone, including granite, marble, travertine, limestone, and slate.

As the planet's crust grew and eroded, it pushed minerals up from its core, forming huge rock deposits, which we call “quarries”.

Step across a natural stone floor and experience the same material quarried and built by ancient cultures.

From timeless monuments like the pyramids in Egypt and the majestic Greek and Roman temples, to the great civilizations of India and China, natural stone has played a key role in architecture throughout history.

It is the world’s oldest building material. In 2500 B.C., Djoser’s Step Pyramid in Egypt, the first structure to be made entirely of natural stone, was built using huge blocks of granite and limestone.

Today, natural stone quarries are found throughout the world in regions of Italy, China, Spain, India, USA, Mexico and also here in the Canada.

Innovations in the stone industry’s equipment and technology have revolutionized the process of extracting stone from the quarry and installing it in a home.

Modern tools can accomplish this with such speed and efficiency that now natural stone is available to all and is beloved for its durability, character and look.

Few flooring products compare to the beauty of natural stone, and nothing can create pride quicker than walking into your home and onto a natural stone floor.

And while it is usually more expensive than ceramic tile, natural stone will virtually always increase your home’s resale value.

Today, there is a wide selection of natural stone choices, and we want you to be a smart and informed shopper about all of them. Thus, in the sections that follow, we’ll explain each type in detail.

Count on us to help you learn about granite, the hardest and densest stone, marble, known for its rich, luxurious quality, limestone, a softer, more porous stone, and the popular travertine.

We will also take a close look at slate and tumbled stone, North America’s favourites in rustic settings.

Finally, we should mention that there is a product called Manufactured Stone. (Also called Agglomerate Stone.) It’s a synthetic stone product that can be used for flooring and you can learn more about it in the How It’s Made section.

So please continue on to the other Natural Stone sections and see if this beautiful, ancient and alluring flooring product would be a smart choice for you and your home.