What Goes into Selecting Swimming Pool Stone?

Designing a pool can be fun, and we want ‘in’ on the fun!

Building prestigious swimming pools for over 20 years has taught us a lot about the complexity of swimming pool installations and in particular, swimming pool coping stones.

Choosing your coping stones is one of the first and most important considerations a customer should make because the right coping stones can, quite literally, transform your landscape.

Building a pool can be fun. Well, possibly not the hard labour part! But generally, designing, landscaping and choosing the materials (especially from our huge range of options) is fun. And from our perspective, working with customers and clients to achieve their dream pool is extremely rewarding.

Narrowing down those options and getting tips and advice on how to transform your landscape can make all the difference, while taking the headache out of selecting your swimming pool coping stones.

Use our interactive swimming pool builder

Assisting in the decision-making process for customers is a key factor when their are so many choices available. Luckily, we’ve considered how to do this very thing at Cranbourne Stone, and the result is our Build your Own Swimming Pool tool to give you an interactive glimpse of how the many choices available for our stone and porcelain pool copings and surrounds will look.

For our award-winning pool builders, we’ve found it acts as an invaluable sales and time-saving tool for you. By showing this to your customers, you will simplify the process of choosing for them. It looks pretty professional too and demonstrates to the customer you have their best interests firmly in mind.

Our knowledge and design expertise

One of our best selling products are coping stones. In fact, it’s become a bit of a speciality for us and we now have the largest stock of swimming pool copings in the UK. We also source new stone and porcelain every year to make sure we’re bang on trend.

But we go one step further than ‘just stocking them’ of course. We source, cut, shape and profile stone for swimming pools and bespoke landscape projects. Our knowledge and design expertise means we can offer that truly bespoke and unique service. We have the skills and equipment to cut coping stones to your requirements in our workshop to ensure the most accurate fit for your pool surround.

Inspiring design transformations

We love to use our knowledge of the latest stone products on the market to advise how they will fit each customer’s design aspirations.

For example, the New Barton Ash Limestone in grey can look stunning with lavender planting.

And for a stylish, modern look, the Italian 20mm porcelain, with sawn edges would be our recommendation – we love it! The bonded overlip creates the illusion of a deep square edge, very ‘en vogue’ right now.

And if you prefer the visual impact of the Sawn York, but budgets are a little tight, you can achieve a very similar look with the Leckford Sandstone. It’s a beautiful sawn Spanish sandstone and reminds us of the cathedrals in Barcelona. And, unlike the Indian Sandstone, it’s very consistent in colour.

Landscaping tips

Along with our penchant for watching Alan Titchmarsh and David Domoney on TV of course, we’ve got years of industry experience and product knowledge on finding the right landscaping stone and porcelain for your landscape projects.

For a more traditional look, Tumbled Limestone in grey or pearl or Georgian Antiqued Sandstone works well and offers a beautiful, understated look as do the Downton Limestone and Unfilled Travertine.

Always ask us, because it’s very likely we can provide solutions that will get you just what you’re looking for, whatever your budget.

Top tips when choosing Limestone or Sandstone for swimming pool coping

And if you have oak trees in your garden, it’s better not to consider Limestone as a coping stone or paving choice, as it can cause staining to the Limestone. We can, however, recommend a 20mm thick porcelain, which is definitely fit for the job.

Safety should always be a priority when installing or designing your pool area. As such, our Limestones have textures applied to the surfaces to make them slip resistant.

By contrast, Sandstone has a natural grip, fantastic for achieving slip resistance around pools. However, it tends to go green over the winter. To remedy this, use a diluted chlorine solution. Make sure you wash it off well though and keep it off the grass!

We offer our customers the best solutions  

Our team will always strive to provide the best service and the best products. We want you, as a loyal customer, to take full advantage and use our knowledge of the industry. From products, bespoke crafting of paving and copings, to stone design tips and even a friendly voice at the end of the phone if you can’t decide.

Because we understand that, often, it’s the product knowledge and finishing touches that make the difference between “okay” and “oh my goodness, that’s amazing!”.

Whether you’re choosing for your own pool, or you’re a pool builder helping customers to decide, we can help. In fact, if you’re the latter, let us save you time. Tell your customers to contact us direct or visit our Build your Own Pool tool first before your next swimming pool project.