NATURAL STONE TRENDS - 2017
10-01-2017
At international level, the natural stone market will continue to grow this year, both in terms of sales revenue and average prices per ton.
The customer trends experienced in the past 1-2 years are expected to continue and strengthen in the market:
Natural materials
We can see a general tendency to re-evaluate natural building materials, thus the role of natural stones is also decisive. There is a general demand for placing greater emphasis on natural architectural solutions in our residential, work or community spaces. Thanks to their versatile usage potential, natural stones can play a key role in the environmentally conscious architecture in the future.
Environmentally conscious choice
In our more and more environmentally conscious world, it is a basic requirement that ecological considerations apply to architectural solutions and materials as well. The very low environmental load of the production of natural stone coverings compared to the other building materials, and the customer demand to use stone materials from local and regional sites (e.g. European stones from European quarries) can together ensure that natural stone products are able to meet the ecological requirements.
Rustic appearance
In the case of stone coverings, there is an increasing trend, in outdoor and indoor as well, to use more rustic and rough surfaces instead of the honed/polished finishes, either by using special surface treatment or by applying the natural quarry-rough surface of some types of stones (e.g. slates, porphyry).
Marble „Renaissance” from Italy
The unbroken popularity of marble worldwide, especially the marbles from Italy, among others the marble of Carrara, has a tremendous impact on the market. It has originally been generated by the demand from the United States in the early 2000s, and then has become commonplace among international architect designers. As a secondary effect of the rising demand for Italian marble, less well-known marbles have also appeared in the market either from overseas or from Europe.
Elegant colors
White-gray-black style is still dominant in colors, and light, neutral, pastel shades are gaining space next to the extravagant loud colors (e.g. onyxes). A typical choice in this case is the limestone and the sandstone and of course the marble.
