Silver Travertine has been steadily increasing in popularity over the last few years, this has coincided with good quality Silver Travertine becoming harder to source from the largest exporter: Turkey.
If you are looking at Silver Travertine for your project, the two things you must consider are quality and colour.
Quality
This is the single biggest point of difference in the market today. These are the things you should be looking out for:
- Holes – Travertine naturally has holes, they occur during the formation process of the stone. However, when we are using travertine as a tile or paver, we do not want too many holes. This will reduce the strength of the stone and increase wear and tear. Larger holes also indicate poor quality travertine.
- Powdery / soft patches – These are softer parts of the tile face that can be easily worn away.
- Cracks – They do not get better with time.
Colour
When the Silver Travertine from Turkey became harder to get, many importers started bring in lower quality stone that was easier to get. The quality obviously suffered but the colour changed too. Much darker grey colours along with warmer brown colours started being sold as Silver even though they barely resembled Silver Travertine. Great quality Silver Travertine should be a light grey colour with some warm tones.
How to get the best quality Silver Travertine
There are many different grades or qualities on the market. The best way to judge the quality of the travertine is to have a look at the stock. This means physically looking at the travertine in the crates to make sure it matches the travertine on display. It is only way to be sure of the quality and colour.
November 2019
