What a panel actually is
Strips of stone of varying height are cut, and their fronts are split rather than sawn, so each one keeps a broken face. Those strips are then bonded side by side onto a flat backing to make a rectangular unit.
The strips project by different amounts, which is the part that matters. A ledger wall is made of shadow, and the shadow comes from some strips standing proud of their neighbors. A panel with a flat front would be a stone-colored board.
Split face carries the range
Split face is far and away the leading finish, with natural, honed, rock face, tumbled and sandblasted groups behind it.
Splitting a stone along its natural break leaves a front that is irregular in every direction, and that irregularity is the whole product. A sawn face reflects evenly; a split one catches light on every ridge and drops it into every hollow, which is why the same panel looks different at three times of day.
The corner piece
This is the part most often discovered too late. Where a ledger wall turns an outside corner, a flat panel leaves its backing and the sawn ends of every strip on view.
The answer is an L-shaped corner unit, made so the split face continues around the angle. Corners are ordered by the running length of the corner rather than by area, and a fireplace breast or a column can need a surprising number of them.
The stones in the range
Marble is the largest material, then quartzite, cement, travertine, limestone, sandstone, slate and granite.
Quartzite is the one most people picture as stacked stone: hard, layered and naturally splitting into strips, which is why so much of the classic look is made from it. Cement panels imitate the same arrangement in a cast material. Cement tile carries the cast version.
Sizes, and the interlocking edge
6x24 leads, then 6x12, 9x24, 6x18, 9x12 and 9x18, with most pieces around three quarters of an inch thick at the backing.
Panel edges are toothed rather than straight, so one unit interlocks with the next and the vertical join between panels disappears into the pattern of strips. A straight-edged panel would leave a visible line every two feet.
Thickness is a range, not a number
The thickness figures across this page run from under half an inch to three quarters and beyond, and on a ledger panel that number means something different from what it means on a tile.
A tile has one thickness. A panel has a backing thickness and a projection on top of it, and the projection varies strip by strip because that is the point of the product. The figure on a listing describes the panel at its thickest, so a wall of them stands further off the substrate than a single number suggests. It matters where a ledger wall meets a door frame, a window reveal or a run of ordinary tile.
Shade variation across a wall
Most of the pieces here that publish a variation figure sit at low or moderate, which is lower than a split natural stone might be expected to produce.
The reason is that a panel is already a blend. Each unit carries four or five strips selected by the maker, so the sorting that would otherwise happen on the wall has happened in the factory, and a run of panels evens out faster than a run of individual stone pieces would.
Light is what makes or kills it
A ledger wall lit flat from the front goes dead, because the relief casts no shadow and all that is left is the color of the stone.
Lit from above or below at a shallow angle, every ridge throws a shadow and the wall comes alive. That is why ledger panels turn up so often on fireplace breasts with a light above them, on exterior elevations that catch a low sun, and behind a bar where the lighting was planned with the wall.
Where a ledger panel goes
A fireplace surround, a feature wall, the front of a kitchen island, a column, an exterior elevation, a retaining wall face and a bar front.
It is a wall product throughout, since the relief that makes it work is exactly what makes it wrong underfoot. Stone mosaic tile has the sheet products in the same stones, and cement tile the cast panels.
