QUARTZITE TILES - DESIGNER'S CHOICE OVERACHIEVERS
Quartzite is a type of stone which is naturally perfect for home design. It combines elegance and subtlety with the character hard wearing quartz as an all purpose tile for the modern home. Quartzite is one of the new fashionable stones on the market, and it’s getting rave reviews from some designers for its colors and toughness.
Quartzite color and range
The color range with quartzite really is surprising. If you don’t know much about this stone, it’ll be worth researching, because it’s pretty spectacular. There are reds, oranges, blues, greys, browns, and some very subtle, beautiful compound mixes of colors.
Even compared to the famous designer stones like sandstone, slate and granite, it looks good. It’s also a reliable material to work with in terms of design needs.
Quartzite and high usage areas
Quartzite is also getting compared with granite for its versatility and durability. That’s no overstatement. This is a very tough stone indeed, flexible, with low absorption in relation to stains. Even sump oil makes little or no impression on it. In high usage areas, it’s an obvious choice for taking the pounding of heavy traffic and people coming in from outdoors.
This is a natural non-slip stone, and is often used as a veneer around saltwater pools for its high resistance to salt. It’s particularly good in wet areas where installation of tiles may be difficult due to water exposure. The fact that these beautiful tiles also look fantastic around a pool doesn’t hurt, either. Quartzite is becoming a “must have” look in design features of these areas.
Designing with Quartzite
The design features of quartzite have been somewhat of a revelation, too. This stone really deserves to be considered a major design stone. Its uses include cladding, and stackstone. It’s made of quartz, as the name suggests. This is one of the hardest of all types of mineral. Quartz rates a 7 on the Mohs Scale of 10, with a diamond being 10. Being this tough, quartzite can also be used for paving, another heavy duty job which can be an issue for designers.
Another design factor with quartzite is that it requires very little working, and therefore has an almost zero footprint in terms of emissions. It doesn’t even need a major manufacturing process, just cutting. It’s extremely resistant to weathering because of its chemical composition, making it a good outdoor option in many design scenarios.
Ancient stone, modern look Quartzite
Quartzite is a hard metamorphic rock, formed from an original sandstone. This sandstone is put under great pressure, and heated, to produce quartzite. The color ranges come from minerals incorporated into the stone during this process.
In the Scottish highlands, there are mountains comprised of Cambrian quartzite. That was 400 million years ago. Everything else around these mountains, including ancient continents, has long since gone. If you’re a homeowner who’s had enough of seeing your outdoor work dissolve in the weather, quartzite may be just what you need.