There are plenty of ways to have natural stone finished before it’s used to create your new floor, and one of those ways is sandblasting. It involves the application of silica sand to the surface of the stone through a high-pressure air gun, and it’s a process that comes with a number of benefits.
Rustic Appearance
One of the most attractive features of natural stone is its timeless beauty, which is why people often use it to create a more rustic appearance. Weathering helps create that look, and sandblasting is a great way to weather stone without having to wait. It forms small craters and creates the appearance of age, even if the stone is freshly quarried.
Attractive Texturing
When fine granules of silica sand are blasted at the surface of your stone flooring at high pressure, they create a sense of depth and added dimension that stone typically lacks. This lends the room a warmer atmosphere, and the texture of the floor helps prevent lighting bouncing up into your eyes. Overall, it’s a more relaxed look.
Highlighted Colours
As mentioned above, sandblasting stone creates lots of little craters. Those craters help highlight the natural colour of the stone, softening out hues to create a subtler palette. Colours won’t appear quite as dramatic, but they will be more complex and unique.
Added Traction
Appearances matter, but most people will find themselves looking for sand-blasted stone thanks to a more practical benefit: added traction. Natural stone floors can be quite slippery, causing a hazard only made worse by the hardness of the surface itself. By creating a little extra texture, sandblasting significantly improves traction. You could walk over sandblasted stone flooring even wearing socks or wet shoes and not have to worry about slipping. That’s just one reason why stone around swimming pools and across patios tends to be sandblasted.
