Natural Stone

Slate is just about the perfect material for kitchen flooring. It has a variety of features which make it particularly safe and stable in this room, and it comes in a wide variety of colors, multicolors, finishes, and designs.

Safety

In its natural form, slate has a clefted texture that is rough and bumpy. This is often referred to as a natural finish, since in this form the stone looks like it could be sitting in the side of a mountain.

The best thing about clefted slate is that it almost never gets slippery. Even if you spill dishwater and tomato sauce on the floor, you will always have a little bit of friction. That is why slate is so often used in restaurants and kitchens, where a nasty slip can quickly turn into a lawsuit.

Durability

Slate is one of the hardest building materials around. Aside from that, it has a relatively low absorption rate. This means that unlike some other materials, slate doesnt absorb as much liquid into its pores.

When a colored liquid such as juice gets into a materials pores, it can stain that material from deep within, creating a permanent mark. Even if the liquid is just water, the water can sit in its pores and rot away the material, possibly even expanding and contracting, weakening the entire installation.

With slate, all you have to do is apply a light sealer during installation, and you will pretty much clog the pores for life. You may want to reapply the sealer every year or so if you want to really protect the installation, but with common use this may not be necessary.

Color

One of the great things about slate is the variety. There are well over 100 different colors available, and many of those are multicolors.

A multicolored stone refers to material that has multiple colors running throughout it. These colors are comprised of various chemicals that were present during the formation of the stone. They can appear in the form of veins, waves, spots, or even naturally occurring landscapes which will stretch out breathtakingly across the surface of the stone.

The way that various colors merge and interact in any given piece of stone is random, and every single tile is a one of a kind work of natural art. Coordinating the many colors found in even a single type of slate can be like creating a tremendous masterpiece, that reflects the union of your soul and the natural world.

Finish

While slate comes naturally in a clefted finish, it can be worked, ground, and even polished down.

Polished slate is smooth and has a shining luster that is similar to marble or granite. However, the polishing process tends to remove much of the vibrancy of color that is found in its natural counterpart. Polished slate can also get quite slippery when wet. Polished slate can also be scratched, although a good multicolor tends to hide scratches.
Honed slate is not as lustrous as polished, but it does have a little more traction when wet.

Brushed slate refers to a process where the points and peaks are honed off of the material, but the ridges are left. The final result is a material that retains its dimensional quality, but doesnt have the edge that might make it harsh to walk on barefoot.

For all of these reasons, slate is quickly becoming one of the most popular materials for kitchen installations. To see just a small selection of some of the natural slates we have in stock, you can visit http://pebblez.com/stone/slate.htm