Other Exterior Stones

To complete your vision, there are many other types of stone available to provide the texture, size, color and practicality you have in mind.

Sandstone

Some varieties of sandstone are resistant to weathering and are easy to work, making it a common building and paving material. A sedimentary rock, sandstone is composed mainly of compressed sand-sized minerals or rock. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar, the most common minerals in the Earth's crust. Like sand, sandstone may be any color, but the most common are tan, brown, yellow, red, gray and white.

Quartzite

A decorative stone often used as a wall covering, roofing tiles, flooring and stair steps, quartzite is a hard metamorphic rock that started life as sandstone. When the sandstone turns into quartzite, its individual quartz grains recrystallize to form a beautiful, interlocking mosaic of quartz crystals. Pure quartzite is usually white to grey, though quartzite often occurs in various shades of pink and red due to varying amounts of iron oxide.

Fieldstone

Fieldstone, used primarily in driveways, exterior walls and gardens, is quite literally stone collected from fields. Technically, fieldstone is any building stone used in its natural shape. Fieldstone colors are varied, from standard grays and browns to tan, light red, and light blue-to-dark blues.

Flagstone

Flagstone is not the name of a specific type of stone; rather, it is the generic term used to describe the thin slabs of stone used most frequently in walks or driveways. These can be composed of fine-grained sandstone, quartzite, bluestone, limestone and slate.

Cobblestone

Cobblestone is natural, rounded stone that is large enough to be used in paving. Although no longer used to pave city streets, cobblestones are still used to give a quaint, romantic feel to driveways, pathways and edgings in private property.

Tumbled Stone

Tumbled (also called waterwashed) flagstones or cobblestones have undergone an antiquing process that "tumbles" away each stone's sharp corners and edges for an antiquarian appearance. The process creates stones with a somewhat washed-out surface color, ideal for more muted projects.

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