Travertine paving is what we lay around more Perth pools than every other stone combined, and it is a genuinely good default. Warm cream through to walnut, cool underfoot in full summer sun, and grippy wet, which is the whole job of a pool surround.
Get a price for travertine paving
A photo of the area and a rough size is enough to price it.
Travertine is the stone most Perth pools end up in, and for once the popular choice is the right one. It stays cooler underfoot than almost anything else at the same price, and it grips when it is wet, which is the pair of properties a pool surround actually needs.
We supply it, lay it wet on a full mortar bed, cut it to the pool edge and seal it before we leave. The sealing is not an upsell and it is not optional on our jobs: unsealed travertine around a Perth pool will stain, and the first thing that stains it is the pool water.
It comes tumbled, with a softened edge and a lightly worn face, or honed and filled for a flatter and more contemporary surface. Tumbled is the one that suits most Perth backyards and it hides a chip far better.
It is chosen for how it looks and it earns its place on how it behaves. Both are worth separating, because the second one is what you live with.
This is the real reason it dominates pool surrounds here. A cream travertine surround in full February sun is walkable barefoot when a charcoal porcelain beside it is not. It is not marketing, it is the colour and the porosity together.
Tumbled travertine has an open, slightly pitted face that keeps its grip with water on it. Around a pool that matters more than any other property, and it is why we will talk you out of a polished finish for a surround.
A tumbled edge is already irregular, so a knock on a corner does not read as damage the way it does on a machine-cut porcelain edge. On a surface that gets furniture dragged across it every summer, that is worth something.
A permanently shaded, permanently damp travertine surface will go green in a Perth winter, the same as any porous stone. In a narrow shaded side return, porcelain is the better answer and we will say so.
Travertine is porous. That is the source of everything good about it, the cool surface and the wet grip, and it is also the source of every problem it has. A stone that breathes water in will breathe whatever is dissolved in that water in with it.
So the bedding matters more than it does under a sealed material. We lay it on a full mortar bed rather than on sand or on dabs, because a void under a porous stone fills with water and the water comes back up through the face as a permanent dark patch. Spot-bedded travertine is the single most common cause of the blotchy surround people assume is a bad batch of stone.
It is then sealed with a penetrating sealer, not a topical one. A penetrating sealer sits inside the stone and leaves the surface looking and feeling like stone. A topical coating sits on top, looks wet, and peels in Perth UV within a couple of summers.
Travertine is the one material here where the stone itself, the finish and the shape of the pool all pull in different directions, so two travertine jobs of the same area can price quite differently.
A standard cream tumbled paver and a premium walnut or silver travertine are not close on price. The colour you fall in love with in the yard is worth checking before the quote rather than after.
Honed and filled is machine flattened with its natural holes filled at the factory, which costs more than tumbled. For a pool surround we usually recommend tumbled anyway, so this is a look decision rather than a performance one.
A rectangular pool is a straight run of cuts. A freeform surround is a cut on almost every paver against the edge, and that is time.
New travertine is sealed as part of the job. Stripping a failed topical sealer off existing stone is separate work and it is not quick.
Travertine very rarely fails as a stone. It fails as a surface, and almost always for one of these five reasons.
Cut and fitted on site, piece to piece. The surface for a freeform pool or an awkward courtyard.
Pale, local and soft. Right against a limestone wall or under an alfresco, wrong on a driveway.
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.