Limestone paving is the most Perth surface there is, because most of the city is built on the stuff. It is pale, it is local, it sits naturally against a limestone wall, and it is softer than every other material on this site.
Get a price for limestone paving
A photo of the area and a rough size is enough to price it.
Two different products share this name and they are worth separating before anybody quotes you. Natural limestone is quarried stone, cut into pavers, with the colour variation and the shell fragments that come with it. Reconstituted limestone is limestone aggregate cast into a consistent block, and it is what most Perth walls and a lot of Perth paving actually are.
Natural is warmer and less uniform, and it costs more. Reconstituted is dimensionally exact and considerably cheaper, and on a large area it reads flatter and more modern than people expect.
We lay both wet on a full mortar bed. With limestone that is not a preference, it is close to a requirement, and the reason is in the next section.
This is the material we most often talk people out of, and it is worth being straight about why rather than just taking the job.
Nothing else matches a reconstituted limestone retaining wall the way limestone paving does. On a block that already has limestone in it, anything else reads as a decision and this reads as the ground.
Out of the weather and off the pool edge, limestone is a genuinely lovely pale surface and its softness stops mattering. This is where we recommend it most often.
It is very pale, so it reflects rather than absorbs. In full Perth sun a limestone surface is one of the more comfortable ones to stand on barefoot.
Limestone is soft. A car marks it, a dropped tool chips it, and around a pool it takes salt badly and goes grey and pitted on the exposed side. We will lay it around a pool if you want it, and we will tell you what it will look like in eight years first.
Limestone is porous and comparatively soft, which is a bad combination under point loading. A paver that is bearing on three high spots instead of on its whole underside will eventually crack across the unsupported middle, and limestone reaches that point far sooner than a dense stone does.
A full mortar bed removes the problem by giving the paver continuous support. That is the single biggest reason limestone that was dry laid on sand in a Perth backyard is usually cracked in places and limestone that was bedded properly is usually not.
The joint gets the same attention. Limestone is a calcium carbonate stone, so it reacts to anything acidic, and a badly chosen cleaning product does more damage to a limestone surface in an afternoon than ten years of weather does.
Limestone has the widest spread of any material on this site, because two quite different products share the name and they do not cost the same.
This is the big one. Reconstituted limestone is aggregate cast into consistent blocks and it is considerably cheaper. Natural limestone is quarried and cut, carries real colour variation, and costs more for it.
Larger natural limestone comes in thicker sections, which is more material and more handling on every piece. A big format is not simply the same stone in a bigger square.
Limestone is soft, so a compromised base shows up as cracked pavers rather than as a lip. Where the ground needs real work first, that work is not optional here the way it might be under a dense paver.
Worth doing on an alfresco or near a pool, and it is separate from the laying. It slows staining and salt erosion; it does not make a soft stone hard.
Limestone is the material on this site most likely to be blamed for a failure that was not its fault, and most likely to genuinely be at fault when it is on the wrong job.
Cut and fitted on site, piece to piece. The surface for a freeform pool or an awkward courtyard.
The default Perth pool stone. Cool underfoot, grippy wet, and sealed before we leave.
Near zero absorption, exact sizing, never needs sealing. The low maintenance answer.
A photo of the area and a rough size is enough. If we think another material would serve you better we will say so, and say why.