6 Ways to Improve Your Home With Natural Stone Cladding

Stone cladding is an eye-catching exterior for a home, making it look classic and ageless no matter what the architectural style. But that is not the only way this kind of stonework can transform a home. From major projects such as a complete home exterior make over to smaller jobs such as cladding a boring fireplace or floor to create a depth of character in an individual room, stone work can make your house feel like a whole new home.

The variety of options available is dazzling. From rustic brick looks to sophisticated cream stone styles, today’s stone cladding is revolutionary in both appearance and ease of installation. So what you can do with it? How can you use it to create a completely new and gorgeous look for your home?

Stone Cladding for Outside the Home

• The Exterior of the Home – The most obvious use of stone cladding is to cover the exterior of the home or to create one or two accent walls on the exterior. A home with the appearance of grey cut stone exterior walls stands out with a certain sophistication, and a porch with sandstone walls is a bright and welcoming entrance. A stone clad home has a timeless look because it recreates an ancient material for a new, fresh look that makes it stand apart.
• Garden Walls – The garden is an oasis in the fine weather and even in the winter it can be a joy to look at from the comfort of a chair by the window. Garden walls can be simple boundary markers, or with the right stone cladding they can be a landscape feature that serves as a stunning backdrop to the plants and other features in a garden. Stone cladding can also be used on lower walls such as the retaining walls around a landscaped slope.
• Paths and Patios – A simple way to add style to the outside space of your home is to redo patios and garden paths in stone cladding. Patios are an outdoor living space and coordinating the stone veneer for your patio with one used inside provides continuity between the indoors and the outdoors. Gravel might give a path a certain charm, but it scatters and gets messy quickly, which makes for a lot of extra work. Stone work offers the visual appeal with much less hassle and maintenance. The path to the front door are the introduction to a home, so this smaller scale project has a big visual impact and can add substantially to a property’s kerb appeal.

Stone Cladding for Inside the Home

• Interior Walls – A very large space can show amazing character when an entire room or more features stone cladding walls, but even smaller spaces can be enhanced with an accent wall in stone. An entryway or hallway sets the mood for a home, and cladding those walls with stone tells guests that their host has distinctive good taste. A rustic brick clad wall can create a warm and homey feeling in a kitchen, and stone cladding in a conservatory with a solid wall can really give it the feeling of an exterior space but without the exposure to the elements.
• Fireplaces – The fireplace is usually the focal point of a room, and a ho-hum fireplace can undermine otherwise lovely decorating. People are drawn to fireplaces, even if there isn’t a fire, so re-doing a fireplace is a high impact change in a room. In the kitchen or the sitting room, a stone veneer finish adds to the primal appeal of fire. Stone veneer also always homeowners to change the overall shape of the fireplace. An arch, for example, can be created in a square opening, making for a dramatically different look and feel for the whole room.
• Floors – Using stone cladding for flooring is a great way to add the beauty and charm of stone to a smaller space or one with a lot of cabinets or other features on the walls. Stone veneer creates the sense of an older space without limiting how wall space can be used. It’s a wonderful option for kitchens or narrower hallways that would feel crowded with stone clad walls. Floors and fireplaces can be done in coordinating stone veneer to develop a strong decorating theme for a single room or throughout an entire home.

Stone cladding can a reasonably priced investment to give a home a complete make-over whether the home owners are looking to upgrade their living space or increase its value because they are planning to sell. This is a lasting change for a home, but one that means enduring beauty and less maintenance than painting or pebble dash for the exterior and a dazzling transformation for the interior.

Source by Stephen O’Connor