Stone vs Brick: Choosing The Right Patio

Would you prefer your patio to be paved with stone or woven in elegant brickwork? Both choices reflect beautiful but starkly different heritages.

Stone

The Stone Age was Mankind’s longest Age. It lasted approximately two million years, from the dawn of Mankind (or possibly Mankinds - as paleoanthropologists seem to keep discovering new species of Homonid, including this week’s Homo naledi)to the moment when someone noticed that some of the shinier rocks melted in the fire. For all that time, stone ruled. Humans carved softer stones with harder stones. We raised great monoliths and dolmens and henges of stone for purposes that remain obscure to modern eyes.

Stone is a venerable material. From the blue-black slate to the pale yellow sandstone, a patio of stone has a heritage that harks back to the relationship that first set man apart from the animal kingdom. Stone has a natural beauty forged in the fires of volcanoes and polished by the slow movement of glaciers.

Brick

What enquiring mind first took mud and shaped it and baked it and produced the first bricks? If you get the heat or the recipe wrong, bricks tend to explode. This early pioneer must have observed the explosions and refined the recipe and increased or decreased the temperature of the kiln until identical bricks could be produced. The fired brick had a predecessor, the sun-dried mudbrick. Made of straw and mud these could be used for construction in hot dry climates. But the fired brick house did not melt during the first rainstorm and the idea quickly spread around the ancient world. Humans had relied on stone, now they could create it.

Brick represents Mankind’s final mastery of stone. It has a uniformity of size and quality that stone, with its veins and rough hewn edges, will always lack. Their small size means that elegant patterns can be formed in their arrangement, highlighting a feature, suggesting a path.

If you still can’t decide, we may have the perfect solution. We could always construct a patio of flagstones for the rear of your house (showcasing rustic homeliness for friends and family) and a formal herringbone weave driveway of brickwork at the front (showcasing both your sophisticated modern urbanity to anybody who happens to be driving past)

Whatever material you choose to construct your patio from, our dedicated team of experts can help at every stage. Please contact us on 01603 360548 or drop us an email at enquiries@knightslandscaping.co.uk