It's true that natural stone paving products will generally have more colour variation than manmade paving products and this is often the beauty highly sought after when buying a natural stone paving material. Some types of natural stone paving, for example grey sandstone, black limestone and slate are less varied than other sandstone paving options.

Porcelain and concrete products tend to be plainer or at least more consistent in colour and texture than natural stone and have fewer natural characteristics, markings and veins etc, however many of these are also created to have a similar appearance to a natural stone paving material, so it's really a case of filtering by the colour you are after and having a look at the products you like and ordering samples if required.

Some manmade paving materials such as concrete are often dyed to a specific colour and over time this will fade. Others contain natural aggregates in the surface of the stone and will therefore remain true to colour. With concrete block paving, 'natural' coloured blocks are the colours of the natural aggregates used to make the material such as the sand and cement and therefore do not tend to fade or change too much over time.

Porcelain paving is UV and fade resistant and is another good option for colour longevity.

With natural stone, colours may weather and evolve over time, however they will generally not lose pigment and will always clean up back to their natural colour. Black limestone products tend to fade to a lighter grey over time and although when newly quarried, they are very dark velvety black, they lighten to a mid-grey in sunlight. Consider an alternative such as slate, basalt or porcelain if a dark grey / black paving is desired.

With regards to our images used on the website, we mainly use photographs from the brochures of our leading brand products and these provide a good representation of the products we sell, however lighting conditions and reprographic limitations may affect the appearance of the goods or your perception of them.

We offer a sample service with many of our products and this used in conjunction with the image will help you decide on the range of colours and surface texture of the material.