Shell stone is what it says
A large group here is shell stone, a limestone so full of shell and coral fragments that the fragments are the visible texture rather than an occasional trace.
It forms in shallow tropical water where the sediment is almost entirely the remains of living things, and it has paved terraces around the Gulf and the Caribbean for as long as anybody has built there. The holes and the shapes in the face are the fossils, cut through.
Blue limestone is not American bluestone
A blue group runs through this range and it is worth separating from the other blue paving stone in the catalog.
American bluestone is a sandstone from the northeast. A blue limestone is a dense fossiliferous carbonate, quarried in Europe and Asia, darker and finer and with a different surface entirely. They share a color word and nothing else. The sandstone version is in blue tile and mosaic.
Tumbled carries the range
Tumbled leads the finishes here, with natural, brushed, sandblasted and a honed piece behind it.
Tumbling rolls the pieces with abrasive until the edges round and the faces soften, which on a paver does two things: it takes the newness off a terrace immediately, and it removes the sharp arrises that a sawn edge leaves on a surface people walk on barefoot.
The copings come with the pavers
Pool copings sit in this range alongside the paving, in the same stones and the same finishes.
That pairing is the point. A coping caps the pool edge and the deck runs away from it, and the two are seen together from every angle. Taking both from the same bed in the same finish is what makes an edge disappear. Pool copings handles the edge itself.
Thicker than a tile, by a lot
Nearly all of it is an inch and a quarter thick, with groups at 1.18 and two full inches.
A paver is structural. Bedded in sand or gravel it carries its own load and spans small irregularities underneath, where a floor tile is bonded to a substrate that does the carrying for it. That is the whole reason a limestone paver and a limestone floor tile are different objects at different prices.
A porous stone outdoors
Limestone is more absorbent than marble and much more so than a fired body, which is the honest thing to know before specifying it outdoors.
It is also the stone that has paved warm climates for thousands of years, so the combination is well understood. Whatever a particular piece needs is stated by its maker on the product page. Limestone tile covers the material indoors.
Where limestone paving goes
A terrace, a pool surround, a courtyard, a path and a set of steps. It is warm underfoot, pale enough to stay usable in sun, and it weathers into something better than it started as.
The colors here run beige, blue, white, gray and green, which is a wider spread than most paving stones offer and follows from how many separate beds the word limestone covers. Travertine pavers is the closest relative and porcelain pavers the fired alternative.
