Faux Stone Wall Panels – Stunning Interiors Without the Drawbacks of Natural Stone

Durable and aesthetically appealing, natural stone wall panels have been used to bring timeless beauty to buildings around the world for millennia. There are, however, drawbacks to their use…

Natural Stone Drawbacks

The first disadvantage of natural stone is weight, which often prohibits its use due to limitations on buildings’ dead load and may necessitate expensive remedial work to enable attachment of heavy materials to vertical surfaces.

Inherently brittle, comparatively inflexible and fragile, natural stone panels are also at risk of:

• Chipping or breaking during transport/installation
• Warping
• Moisture/water penetration

What’s more, stone utilisation is comparatively low. One cubic-metre of natural marble, for example, will yield just 45 m² of solid stone panels.

Cladding an average-sized modern room’s walls in natural panels would therefore require at least 2 m³ of raw marble – not accounting for damages or the necessity to use panels from multiple blocks to achieve consistency in end products’ tone and texture.

Putting substantial demand on natural resources, this also means the cost per square-metre of natural stone is comparatively high. Combined with the cost of remedial work, this can make use of natural stone financially unfeasible.

Faux Stone Wall Panels

Consisting of thin stone sheets bonded to backing materials, faux stone panels are significantly lighter than solid stone panels, which:

• Enables their use where structural requirements would otherwise prohibit use of stone
• Makes panels easier to handle, reduces installation time and allows them to be installed:

1. Over anterior surfaces without time-consuming, expensive remedial works
2. On any substrate using comparatively inexpensive methods like adhesives, interlocking channels or concealed screws

Preserving stone’s natural beauty while overcoming its inherently brittle/fragile properties, faux stone panels also:

• Offer increased impact resistance, flexural strength & resistance to water/moisture penetration
• Reduce risks of chipping, breaking & warping

Optimal stone utilisation (with 1 m³ of raw marble, for instance, yielding up to 135 m² of faux stone panels) also means:

• Reduced demand on natural resources
• Reduced cost/m²
• Provision of more consistent end-product texture/tone

Summary

Naturally beautiful, lightweight and strong; long-lasting, available in an extensive range of finishes and offering virtually unlimited design potential, faux stone wall panels are a highly cost-effective, environmentally friendly alternative to solid stone panels.

Learn More

To learn more/discuss your interior design ideas, call us on +44 (0) 203 633 4613 today.