Stone finishes.

Most of what we install gets its character from the trowel. These three get it from what is in the mix. Stone flakes, granite chips or a recycled aggregate are broadcast into the top coat while it is wet, then the surface is sanded back, pore-filled and sealed, so the finish carries flecks, grain and the occasional glint across a matt ground. From across the room it reads as stone or terrazzo. Up close it reads as a made surface, which is the point.

Micro-Stone

A blend of stone flakes rather than large chips, sanded back until the stone sits flush with the surface. It is the closest thing we offer to terrazzo or polished concrete without the weight or the depth of either: about three millimetres as a finished system, water resistant and at home on floors, walls, worktops, stairs and in wet rooms. Large flakes set the scatter, fine stone fills the ground between them and the base colour underneath changes everything, so a pale ground with dark flake and a dark ground with pale flake are two different floors from the same system. There are eleven standard large-stone blends and eighteen fine-stone blends and they can be mixed.

Micro-Granite

Granite chips in the same microcement top coat, in two versions. Part coverage is the one on our sample board: a rustic coat for depth, then the chips sprinkled lightly into the final coat as it is trowelled, for a loose salt-and-pepper fleck. Full coverage broadcasts the chips until the surface is covered and sands back lightly to a dense, even, terrazzo-like face. Both go wherever microcement goes. Part coverage suits a wall or a kitchen where you want stone character without a heavy grain; full coverage earns its place on a floor or a worktop that takes real use.

Rock Plaster

A different animal: a resin-bonded wall plaster built up in thin coats over primer and mesh, less than a millimetre a coat, with a recycled aggregate in the surface. Three aggregates, each with its own character. Recycled fine shell gives an even sparkle that reads strongest on dark colours. Recycled bottle glass gives a visible, even fleck and is the most stone-like of the three. Natural cork gives a warmer salt-and-pepper grain with a softer surface. It is made for high-traffic walls in homes and commercial settings, is water resistant once sealed and can go in a wet room or outside. It is not a floor finish and it should not be used where water can pond, so a shower niche is out.

Colour

The ground is pigmented in-studio and matched to a physical reference or a named paint colour. The stone keeps its own colour, which is why the ground matters more here than on any other finish we do. Every combination is confirmed on a sample panel in your own light before we start.

Sealing and wear

Micro-Stone and Micro-Granite are open surfaces after sanding, so they are pore-filled before the final seal: a trowelled filler in dry rooms, a thickened wet-area sealer where there is water. Then one or two coats of a two-part polyurethane, which is what takes the wear and sets the sheen; the top sealer can be polished to a diamond finish if you want it. Rock Plaster takes one coat of a single-part matt sealer on a decorative wall and always two coats of the two-part where the wall is high-traffic or wet. A new floor is covered with breathable board for a fortnight before it goes into use.

What they are not

None of these is vapour-open. Where a wall has to breathe, lime or clay plaster is the right call. Rock Plaster is walls only. And the texture that makes them what they are also makes them a little harder to wipe down than a flat sealed microcement, which is worth saying before you put one behind a hob.