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• Marble tiles trends
• Famous beige limestones
• Tiles Substitute materials
• French beige limestones
• Travertines

Travertines

Among the travertines, in addition to the classic Roman types, a Mexican variety first appeared that was esthetically almost identical to Travertino Romano Classico. This was followed on the international market by materials from Turkey and Iran. Iran in particular extracts a travertine very similar to the Travertino Romano Classico but more compact, and a travertine with a pale beige ground crossed by brownish bands that give it a markedly oriented pattern unusual for this type of material.

What has led to this net preference for beige limestones and travertines, a preference that seems to go beyond simple fashionableness (although fads are quite frequent in the stone world)? In fact, it should be emphasized that the demand for beige materials does not come from geographically defined markets that we could call niches, but is the common denominator of all the world's major marketplaces. From the Far Eastern ones (especially China and Japan) to the Southeast Asian (especially Indonesia and Malaysia, where demand was heavy even before the great Asian crisis) down to the United States, where beige materials are entering the mentality of the upper-middle class as desirable for standard and custom creations.

To give an idea of how widely these new-generation beige materials are being used, as pure examples we cite some architectural works utilizing the two varieties of Mareuil, basically a well-defined kind of material. These go from the Republic National Bank of Miami and Armani boutiques in Toronto to the duty-free shop in the Singapore Airport (Mareuil Floreal), the already cited restructuring of the British Museum, the Mirage Bistro in Las Vegas, the Printemps department store in Paris, and wind up on the other side of the world with the Town Hall and Regent Hotel in Sydney (Mareuil Messidor).

The success of these materials should probably be interpreted as one aspect of the great interest the international market is increasingly showing in stone as a whole, viewed as a sober, warm-colored material easy to combine with others in refined and elegant settings - all characteristics indubitably shared by many varieties of beige marble in the widest sense. Added value also comes from the excellent results achieved on beige limestone with antiqued surfaces, a recently successful finish that, done chemically or mechanically, provides for uses of the material that meet with the market needs mentioned.

Nor should we neglect to mention the physical-mechanical properties of most beige limestones, which make them appropriate for use not only in interiors in all sorts of ways but also out of doors and for high-traffic pavements.