If you’re looking to remodel your home, upgrade your fireplace or build an outdoor fireplace, fire pit or kitchen, you’ve likely come across cultured stone. Cultured stone has become increasingly popular as a home accent. Both indoors and out, cultured stone is being used to help people realize their ideal design while bringing along a host of other benefits. The ubiquity of cultured stone might have you wondering about the material: What exactly is it? What are its benefits? Where can I use cultured stone around my home? Here are your cultured stone questions, answered.
Cultured stone: A definition
As you can guess from the name, cultured stone is a man-made product. It’s manufactured by pouring concrete into molds. By using different mold shapes and colors of concrete, cultured stone can be made to look like any type of natural stone. Cultured stone is most often sold in panels for easy installation. Most cultured panels feature a variety of shaped and colored stones to mimic the variegated look you’d get from using a mix of natural stones.
Benefits of cultured stone
If you’re considering using cultured stone in your home, you might be wondering how it compares to alternative building materials. As you might guess due to its popularity, cultured stone has many benefits, including:
- Cost. Cultured stone is considerably cheaper than natural stone alternatives. Cultured stone can cost a quarter to half the price of natural stone.
- Weight. Cultured stone is much lighter than natural stone. When you install a wall, fireplace or island of natural stone, you need foundation or structural support to bear its substantial weight. Cultured stone can allow you to enjoy the look of stone where you’re unable to build infrastructure to support the weight of natural stone.
- Easier installation. The panels and lighter weight of cultured stone make it easier, and faster, to install than natural stone.
- Aesthetic options. Natural stone can be limiting. It can be difficult to find the stone you’re looking for near you, and it’s often cost prohibitive or even impossible to order the natural stone you want. On the other hand, you can find cultured stone in nearly any style.
- Environmental friendliness. Stone quarries are large and intrusive on the environment. Cultured stone lets you get the look of natural stone without having such a profound impact on the environment.
- Easy care. Because it’s made out of concrete, cultured stone is incredibly durable and doesn’t require any special care.
Installing cultured stone in your home
If you think cultured stone might be right for you, stop by one of FireSide Hearth & Home’s four locations to look at your cultured stone options and learn more about installing cultured stone in your home. With the experts at FireSide Hearth & Home, you can plan a beautiful cultured stone indoor or outdoor fireplace, firepit, outdoor kitchen or accent feature.
