Natural Vs Cultured Stone
Stone can be a great accent around your house and garden. It can be used for walls, siding, and walkways. If you are going to use stone around your house, you are going to have all kinds of options in front of you. Those options include what kind of stone you want, what size, and whether you want to go with natural or cultured stone. There are pros and cons to each of your choices, so you need to make sure that you carefully look over all the options and see what works best for you. Of all the choices out there, deciding whether you go with natural or cultured stone can be a good place to start.
Natural Stone
Natural stone is stone that hasn't changed much from when it was pulled out of the quarry. The stone has been shaped, cut, and polished and is ready to install, but other than those manipulations, it's not changed overall. These stones have natural variations, even if they came from the same larger stone. Each piece may look similar and be the same shape, but there will be color changes and pattern changes. That is one of the benefits of using natural stone. It is unique and will give your house some character. One of the cons of using natural stone is that it can be more expensive than using other options. That's because it generally takes more work to handle natural stone.
Cultured Stone
Cultured stone looks like natural stone because one of its components is natural stone. However, cultured stone can also be colored in ways that aren't natural. Cultured stone is made up of stone chips, stone dust, and other stone debris. All those things are combined with epoxy, resin, dyes, and other substances and pressed into a mold. The molds let cultured stone end up in a variety of sizes and shapes. The stones generally all look the same when it comes to coloration and patterns, although there are some specialty stones that could have those variations. That lack of uniqueness is one drawback to using cultured stone, if that's something that you really value. On the other hand, the cultured stone can be colored so that it matches your house better.
If you want to use stone at your house, you have a lot of choices ahead of you. One of the choices you have is whether you want to use cultured or natural stone when you are designing your house.
