Home / Services / Patios & paving / Indian stone
Large-format Indian sandstone is one of the things we're known for. Big riven flags, kandla grey through to warm buffs, laid true on a full mortar bed so the surface stays flat and nothing rocks.
What it is
Buying it is the easy part. A pack of sandstone is not a set of identical tiles, and that is the whole character of the material: no two flags are quite the same colour, size or thickness. Laying it well is a matter of working with that rather than fighting it.
Riven, porous and varied are the three words worth knowing.
In plain English
Indian stone is natural sandstone, quarried in India and split along its bed rather than sawn flat. That split face is what "riven" means: a natural texture, and colour that shifts from flag to flag. It's porous, so it takes a sealer if you want one. It's the natural stone we lay most of, because it gives you real stone without the price of the rarer ones.
Materials
The colour that suits you is mostly about the house it sits against. Here are the three we lay most. Bring us a photo of the brick or render and we'll tell you which sits right.
The one most people picture. A cool blue-grey that suits grey render, anthracite windows and newer builds. Settles a touch lighter as it weathers in.
Warm buffs, autumn browns and pinks with more colour movement across the pack. Suits red-brick and older Leeds houses, and hides leaf-fall and everyday muck better than a pale grey.
Ranges that blend greys, buffs and browns in one pack for a softer, more varied look. A middle road if you can't choose between the grey and the warmer tones.
This is a starting point, not the full range. A deeper colour guide is coming; for now, we'll walk you through samples on site.
Why people choose it
It's porous, so it will take a stain from barbecue grease or red wine if you leave it and haven't sealed it. And the colour varies flag to flag, which most people want and some people don't. If you want a surface that looks identical everywhere, that's porcelain, not this.
It also wants exactly the same base as anything else we lay. Natural stone on a thin base fails just as fast as a cheap tile does.
Still want the real thing? Ask for a quote and we'll come and measure up.
Get a written quote →Not just patios
The same flags take a car's weight on a deeper, stronger sub-base, so you can run one stone from the drive round to the patio. It's a different build to a patio, and we do both.
Indian stone driveways →Real jobs
Our own photos, from our own jobs. If we show it, we built it.
Kandla grey, large format
The old one comes up first
Measured on site and itemised line by line.
Get a written quoteor see more stone paving in the projects
Big flags make a patio look calm and expensive: fewer joints, bigger expanses of stone. They're also the easiest to get wrong.
A 900 by 600 sandstone flag is a heavy, awkward thing. Laid wrong it rocks and the whole patio reads as uneven. We lift them two-handed, set each one to line and level, and check across the job as it goes down, not at the end.
Every flag on a full bed of wet mortar, buttered and bedded, never spot-dabbed on the corners. Natural stone varies a little in thickness flag to flag, so we bed each one to its own depth to keep the surface dead flat.
Even joint widths, struck and pointed neatly, run straight across the patio. On riven stone the joints are half of how tidy the finished job looks, so we set them out properly before the first flag goes down.
Guaranteed for 10 years
A 10-year workmanship guarantee on the groundworks: the compacted sub-base, the full mortar bed under every flag, and the falls that take water off. The base is the part we put our name to. The flags carry their own manufacturer's warranty.
Getting that right across a whole patio is the job. Tell us roughly how big yours is and we'll get a written price to you.
Get a written quote →Common questions
Alternatives
Indian sandstone is the all-rounder, which is a polite way of saying something else beats it for certain houses. Here's when we'd lay something different.
Better when: you want it uniform and modern, with no sealing to think about and the same colour in twenty years as the day it went down.
The trade-off: cold underfoot, unforgiving of any movement in the base, and the premium end on price.
See Porcelain paving →Better when: the house is old Yorkshire stone and new sandstone would look bought-in next to a hundred-year-old wall.
The trade-off: it only comes in as old buildings come down, so it takes longer to source and it costs more to buy.
See Reclaimed Yorkshire stone →Better when: it's a driveway rather than a patio, or the area is small and awkward enough that big flags would mostly get cut up.
The trade-off: far more joint lines than large flags, so it reads busier and there's more jointing to keep on top of.
See Block paving →Want to line all three stones up side by side? Compare them on the patios hub →
Send a photo of the garden and the house, with rough measurements, and we'll come and measure up. You'll get a written, itemised, fixed-price quote, and honest advice on the colour that suits.
Or call 07743 342155