Types of stone cladding, compared

Natural stone cladding comes in four main formats. They can all be cut from the same stone — slate, quartzite or sandstone — but they give completely different walls, and they ask very different things of the person installing them.

Choose the format first, then the stone and colour. As a rule of thumb: the more the stone is prepared before it reaches you, the faster and more predictable the installation; the less it is prepared, the more the finished wall depends on your stonemason’s eye — and the more character it can have.

Then choose the stone

Slate gives the warmest, most varied colour — rusts, golds, pinks and charcoals — in thin, light strips. Quartzite is the hardest and most colour-fast, often with a natural shimmer, and is the safest choice for a wall in full sun. Lesotho sandstone is the palest, giving a clean cream-to-gold wall that brightens an entrance or boundary.

Our honest advice

For a single indoor feature wall, interlocking panels or riven strips give the best result for the least disruption. For a façade, boundary wall or pillars you’ll see every day for decades, building stone or drypack in quartzite or sandstone is worth the extra labour. If you’re unsure, send us a photo of the wall — we’ll tell you what we’d put on it and why.