Riven Natural Stone Paving By London Stone
Experience the unparalleled charm and natural beauty of our Riven Paving collection, where each slab's unique texture and finish combines to create a distinctive and timeless outdoor space. Our riven paving slabs, available in a variety of high-quality stones such as sandstone, limestone, and slate, offer the perfect blend of durability and aesthetic appeal. These slabs are ideal for patios, pathways, and even driveways, bringing elegance and durability to any outdoor area.
What is Riven Paving?
Riven paving refers to natural stone slabs that have been split along their natural grain or bedding planes, creating a slightly rough, uneven surface with a textured finish. This process results in paving stones that have a naturally rustic and weathered appearance, usually suited to more traditional, or naturalistic landscape designs.
Riven paving slabs are less processed than their more modern sawn counterparts, making them less porous, and therefore a harder-wearing paving choice.
Materials in the Range
Riven Sandstone Paving
Our riven sandstone paving slabs are renowned for their rustic charm and versatility. With a range of colours from warm buffs to cool greys, these slabs will enhance any garden design. The naturally riven surface adds texture and depth, creating a timeless appeal. Available in popular sizes like 900x600mm and 600x600mm, these slabs are perfect for creating intricate patterns and expansive patios.
Autumn Brown Sandstone Paving brings warm, earthy tones to your garden, while Raj Green offers a subtle mix of green and brown hues. For a cooler palette, our ever-popular Kandla Grey Sandstone provides elegant grey shades, while Mint Sandstone Paving combines warm buffs with occasional fossil-like patterns. Additionally, Camel Dust introduces soft buff tones, adding a distinctive touch to any setting.
These products offer a beautiful and durable solution for your outdoor spaces, ensuring both aesthetic appeal and lasting performance.
Riven Limestone Paving
Riven limestone paving offers a sophisticated yet durable option for outdoor spaces. Known for its subtle colour variation and consistent, riven texture, limestone is an excellent choice for both traditional and contemporary designs. Our limestone slabs are available in a wide range of colour tones that add a sleek, modern look to any setting. Riven Limestone is extremely hard wearing and represents excellent value. Riven Limestone is extremely hard wearing, and represents excellent value, as its machine sawn edges and lightly riven surface offers a premium finish, like sawn paving, but at a fraction of the cost.
Kota Blue Limestone is a long-time favourite among discerning garden designers and landscapers looking for a versatile paving choice, while its more rustic counterpart, Kota Brown, offers a more traditional, varied look.
Antique Yellow Limestone provides homeowners and designers with a gorgeous weathered finish, by being lightly tumbled to soften its appearance. Perfect for classical designs, this material is available in Project Packs, lending itself to being laid in a traditional 'Random Laying Pattern'. We recently introduced a Grey version of this material, for those looking for a cooler colour palette.
Midnight Black Limestone meanwhile, begins life as a true black colour, but over time weathers into a lighter, graphite grey. Some customers choose to enhance the colour of this material with an enhancing sealer, which helps to retain its depth of colour.
Tumbled Indian Sandstone
Tumbled Indian Sandstone paving offers a softer, aged look. This tumbling process rounds off the edges and gives the slabs a slightly smoother, more refined finish, perfect for creating a welcoming and harmonious outdoor space. The range includes various shades, from the light buffs and warming peach colours found in Tumbled Mint, to the darker, more brooding hues of Black Sandstone, ensuring a versatile selection for any project.
Tumbled Raj Green Sandstone slabs provide a intriguing mix of browns, pinks, and greys, that is akin to the more prestigious (and therefore more expensive) reclaimed Yorkstone. For customers looking for colour consistency, Tumbled Kandla Grey Sandstone is a great choice, that is at home in both rustic and more modern gardens.
All our tumbled pavers are supplied in project packs—an equal mix of four paving sizes. This allows a "random" paving pattern that blends extremely well with period properties or cottage gardens as it gives a relaxed, rustic effect. However, more linear paving patterns are possible using alternating courses for a more modern look. Find out more about paving patterns for patios.
Riven Slate Paving
For those seeking a dramatic and elegant finish, riven slate paving slabs are an excellent choice. The rich, deep colours and naturally split surfaces of slate create a striking appearance that stands the test of time. Slate is not only visually appealing but also incredibly durable, making it ideal for high-traffic areas. Many of us associate slate with the traditional rooftops and gardens of Wales and Cornwall, but higher processing costs combined with a lack of available material to meet demand, lead London Stone to importing our slate paving slabs, to give you the best choice possible. All of our slate is finished with a machine sawn edge, as the material will split if hand-cut. This adds to the material's versatility, as it can be laid with tight 5mm joint lines, giving it a contemporary chicness.
Brazilian Black Slate provides a sleek, true black appearance, with a gently riven top surface, and sawn edges, making this material at home in modern or traditional settings. Brazilian Grey Slate paving slabs offer a cool, calming finish, with minimal colour variation. Despite having a naturally split surface, Brazilian slate is renowned for having a very smooth top face, when compared with other types of slate.
Green Slate, meanwhile, is a consistently coloured, more traditional-looking paver, with the ability to be used in classical or traditional settings (especially if used in the 900x600mm dimension). Rustic Slate offers the ultimate natural stone for a more dramatic, almost prehistoric feel, with warming tones of copper, blacks and greys.
Edges & Laying Patterns
Our range of riven natural stone paving slabs has three edge profile options which suits the material's natural appearance, as well as your garden design. These edge profiles each offer unique aesthetic and functional benefits, allowing you to choose the perfect finish for your project based on your design preferences and practical needs.
- Hand Cut: This edge profile is manually chiselled as part of the quarrying process, and is characterised by its rustic and traditional appearance. An irregular and natural edge that mimics the look of historic masonry. This method emphasises the stone's natural beauty and unique characteristics, making each piece unique. Popular with our Indian riven Sandstone collection.
- Hand Cut & Tumbled: Typically found in our Tumbled Indian Sandstone and Limestones, this edge profiles combine the rough, natural look of hand-cut edges with the softened, weathered appearance achieved through tumbling. After the initial hand-cutting process, the stones are tumbled to smooth out sharp edges and corners, giving them a more aged and worn look. This process adds to the stone's rustic charm while ensuring a more refined finish.
- Sawn: This edge profile is precisely cut using a diamond-tipped saw, resulting in straight, clean edges. This process provides a more contemporary and uniform look, ideal for more modern designs. The precise cuts make it easier to achieve tight joints and consistent lines, offering a sleek and polished appearance. The sawn edge is available only in our riven Slate and Limestone products.
Joint Widths, Installation, & Grouting Info
Once you've chosen your laying pattern, it is important to understand that different types of natural stone flags need to be laid with different joint widths. This is due to dimensional tolerances within each unique paver.
A rule of thumb: products with a hand cut edge need a minimum joint width of 10mm, while sawn edged products can have a minimum joint width of 5mm. You can check which joint width is appropriate for your paving under the 'Specification & Dimensions' tab on each product page on this website.
Installing riven paving slabs can be a straightforward process, provided you follow a few key steps to ensure longevity and stability:
- Preparation: Begin by preparing a solid base. This involves digging to the appropriate depth, laying a sub-base of MOT Type 1, and compacting it with a plate compactor.
- Laying: Lay the sandstone on a mortar mix of sand and cement, ensuring each slab is level and has a slight fall to allow for water drainage.
- Pointing: Once the slabs are laid and the mortar is set, fill the joints with a pointing compound. This will secure the slabs in place and prevent weed growth, as well as giving you an attractive finish. We have put together this helpful blog to help you choose which grouting product suits your Indian stone - and your style - most appropriately. Many of our riven stone slabs benefit from being pointed with a brush-in/sweep-in grout, such as GftK, as it's ideally suited to the stone's surface texture.
Although the layperson can carry-out landscaping projects, London Stone will always advise using experienced professionals to undertake work in your home and garden. Working with a reputable specialist garden designer and/or landscaper (always seek references of previous work), will offer you peace of mind on your investment.
Riven Slab FAQ's
What sizes do riven paving slabs come in?
Our riven paving slabs are commonly available in 900x600mm and 600x600mm, and are often available as a 'Project Pack', which is an equal mix of the four available sizes (made up of an equal mix of a large rectangular piece, a smaller rectangle, a large square slab, and a smaller square flag). Available paver dimensions are displayed on every product page on our website.
Are Steps And Copings Available in Riven Materials?
London Stone offer the complete design solution. Whether you are navigating a change of level in your garden, topping a raised bed or retaining wall, or edging your front garden, we have a wide range of steps and coping options across the entirety of our riven materials. Recently introduced Stone Pavers can also help to complement your design (available in many of our sandstone and limestone options), whether used as patio edging, or to create a gorgeous pathway.
Are bespoke options available?
Of course! London Stone are well known within the industry for pushing the boundaries of what is possible with natural stone, and have a dedicated team of in-house masonry experts to bring your dreams to reality. Why not contact our sales team over WhatsApp to discuss your requirements?
Are grey slabs available in the riven finish?
Yes, we offer riven grey slabs in sandstone, tumbled sandstone, limestone, and slate, perfect for a sleek, modern aesthetic. If grey is your chosen colour, this blog on garden design ideas that feature grey limestone, should get your creative juices flowing.
Can I use riven slabs for driveways?
While riven slabs are primarily used for patios and pathways, they can be suitable for driveways if installed with a proper base to support vehicle weight. If you're considering using a riven paving slab to create a driveway, this blog will give you further information on the best materials to use.
How do I maintain riven paving slabs?
Maintaining riven paving slabs is less laborious when compared to the more porous, sawn natural stones. Regular sweeping to remove debris, and occasional washing with mild detergent and water, will usually suffice. Sealing the slabs can also help protect them from stains and weathering, although with naturally split pavers, is not essential.
It is imperative that when cleaning a limestone, you do not use an acid-based cleaning product, as it will react with the stone, irreparably damaging it. When using any chemical cleaning agent on natural stone, we strongly advise carrying out a product test on a small, inconspicuous area of the material, before undertaking a larger clean.
How does Riven Stone compare in price with other Materials?
Although London Stone will always try to keep our prices as low as possible, investing in any type exterior paving material is significant. Riven paving, however, is at the lower end of the pricing scale when it comes to patio slabs.
Riven Sandstones and Limestones are the most affordable materials London Stone supply, and as they do not generally require sealing, keep costs down. We've written this informative blog, to help you better understand the different cost of materials, as well as keeping costs down, when selecting your materials and deciding on laying patterns.
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