Alfresco paving in Perth is the one floor in the house that is half indoors, and it fails where it changes: the door threshold, the edge of the roof, and wherever water has been left with nowhere to go. We lay it wet, level with the room it runs out of.
Send us your alfresco
A photo from inside looking out is the useful one.
We pave alfrescos, courtyards and patios, and we carry the floor out through the door so the room does not stop at the threshold.
New builds and existing homes, anywhere between Two Rocks and Mandurah.
Under the roof
The sheltered part, where the paving reads as a room's floor and every lipped edge is under a dining chair. Level matters more here than anywhere else outside.
Open courtyards and patios
Out past the roofline, in full Perth sun and full Perth rain. Different material question, different falls, same bed underneath.
The indoor to outdoor join
Running one floor from inside to out, with the levels set so the doors still work and the water still leaves. The hardest twenty centimetres on the job.
Stay level under furniture
A dining table finds a two millimetre lip that bare feet never notice. Under a roof there is no fall to hide behind either.
Shed water away from the house
The fall runs away from the wall, always. Water that ponds at a threshold gets under the door and into the frame long before it stains anything.
Be safe wet
The surface is walked on wet, barefoot and by people carrying things. Slip rating is a specification, not a preference.
Read as one floor
Under the roof and out in the sun are the same surface in two different lights. Choosing for the shaded half alone is how an alfresco ends up looking like two jobs.
The reason a modern alfresco reads as part of the house is that the floor does not change at the door. Same format, near enough the same tone, and no step to catch a chair leg or a toe.
The catch is that the paving still has to fall away from the building and still has to sit low enough that the door tracks drain. Those two requirements pull in opposite directions, and the room between them is a couple of centimetres.
Which is why a threshold is usually solved with a drain rather than with a step: a slim linear grate directly outside the door takes the water, so the paving can start flush and fall away from there.
Every paver and outdoor tile sold in Australia carries a slip classification, set by the ramp test in AS 4586 and reported as an R rating. It is the one number worth checking before you fall in love with a sample, and it is on the supplier's data sheet rather than on the tile.
Indoors, or fully covered and dry
Fine under a roof that never gets wet. Too smooth for anything the rain reaches.
The usual answer for an alfresco
Covered and open areas, patios and courtyards. Grippy wet, still comfortable barefoot and easy to clean.
Pool surrounds, steps and ramps
More texture again. Worth it where people walk wet, and it holds more dirt for it.
Commercial kitchens and wash-down areas
Rarely right at a house. It is hard on bare feet and hard to keep clean.
Porcelain is where the rating varies most, because the same tile is often made in a polished and a structured finish. The pretty one in the showroom and the one that belongs outside are frequently not the same product.
Almost all of it comes back to water, and to whether the paving was bedded solid or sitting on sand and dabs.
That last one is not a fault in the grout. It is the paving moving where a covered section and a section in full sun meet, and it is a jointing decision made before anything was laid.
If it has already moved, it can be lifted and relaid properly.
A photo from inside looking out is the most useful one, because it shows the threshold. Rough size, whether it is covered, and whether there is a slab already there.