Stone Flooring

Stone Flooring

People use stone flooring for several reasons. One is its obvious durability; another is its aesthetics; and the inherent ability to match any furniture or arrangement theme.

Stone flooring is a candidate of the oldest, being used as early as in Mesopotamia when mud huts are often carpeted with stone over a herd packed earth. The next stone flooring evidence was found later on prehistoric tribes along the Nile, precursor of the later mighty Egyptian race. Similarly stone flooring also existed in arboreal homes of the Germanic tribes, and the Goths and Vikings whose longhouses typically have stone floors.

Stone flooring have carried well over thousands of years though a marked difference of the materials today is easily distinguished, so is the diversity of choices.

People use stone flooring for several reasons. One is its obvious durability. Take for instance castles and forts. If not for the materials so often used on these colossal structures, there would be no such remnants of the past. When excavators and archeologist uncovered Pompeii, the most remarkable find was the cobblestone streets and stone flooring. It signified of so many things. Like the usage of roads, this speaks of an organized government structure.

Another reason for using stone flooring is the recent improvement of stone is its aesthetics. In the past, stone floorings are often dull gray flagstones of mostly granite. Today we have marble, limestone, travertine, and slate. Especially noted feature of stone is its veining, which is a highly prized property in stone flooring. Stone flooring, too, have the inherent ability to match any furniture and any arrangement theme, regardless of its colors involved and the house setting.

There are several commonly used types of stone flooring.

Marble is the most elegant stone flooring. It is typically expensive since it is difficult preparing the stone. The most noted feature of marble stone flooring is its veining. It also features the widest ranges of color, ranging from black, cream, red, white, green, gold, gray, and even pink. Some marble stone flooring have different veining properties, others heavily veined and some have subtle colors here and there but beautiful nonetheless.

Granite is the oldest stone flooring ever used. Being the hardest stone flooring material, it found wide use in castles atop battlements and inside on the corridors. Granite has a close grain property having varied mottled pattern. It often has two or more colors and comes in tones ranging from salt-and-pepper to striking rust tones to black.

Limestone has a smooth granular surface that has similar characteristic with marble. And just like marble, it also comes in black, gray, and brown though the most regular ones are often seen in creamy white or yellow tone.