How to choose grey limestones from Portugal

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In this episode, we will be talking about Portuguese grey limestones, where we will make a comparison between the most on demand grey-colored limestones from Portugal.

We start with the Moleanos Blue limestone, which is a fairly known limestone that is a direct variation of the famous Moleanos Beige, but presenting a grey to blue color tone instead. This is basically a medium grain limestone, presenting a pale blue grey color and fairly uniform structure. It presents some darker colored areas as well as occasional fossils and small calcite areas.

All-in-all, this is a very hard limestone, which is commonly used on interior flooring, wall coverings or bath decoration. It can also be used on exterior cladding, diverse masonry. Due to its hardness and compact structure, the Moleanos Blue has an interesting market for residential landscaping projects in Britain, France or Belgium, where we can find numerous applications.

Another important grey colored limestone from Portugal is the Moleanos Cadoico. The Moleanos Cadoico is a particular type of limestone due to its plain and uniform darker grey colored background. This is the closest alternative to the Azul Valverde limestone, which for many years was the main reference grey limestone in Portugal which achieved near celebrity status, but whose quarries are today at the end of their life.

This is essentially a darker grey limestone, presenting a pale but quite uniform background. It shows a fine grain structure, but some regular signs of fossils and inclusions. It may also show some grey color tone variation, from light to dark. Its main selections would depend on the amount of fossils and color tone variation, with higher selections tending to have a clean look. This is one of the hardest limestones in Portugal.

The Moleanos Cadoico is a very versatile limestone, being used on both interior and exterior applications, such as flooring, paving, cladding, wall coverings, diverse decoration and much more.

Our final limestone that is part of this top grey limestone selections from Portugal is called Perlato. Altough not as known as the previous two limestones, the Perlato is an interesting grey limestone that is extracted near the coastal town of Peniche, relatively far from the main limestone extraction área of Serra Aire e Candeeiros.

What we see is a pale grey limestone, showing an abundance of fossils and inclusions. In addition to the fossils, it also shows several small white dots of calcite. Its main selections would vary according to the abundance of fossils as well as color tone variation.

Although not as hard as the previous two limestones, the Perlato is perhaps a more versatile limestone to manufacture, accepting well a wide range of surface finishes, from flamed to bush-hammered, brushed or split-face, just to name some. The Perlato has been mostly used on masonry work, decoration, diverse stonework, some paving, flooring and cladding. This is a limestone to be used on small to medium-scale projects.

So that was our analysis of the main grey limestones from Portugal, any of them a beautiful choice of limestone. If you would like to know more information about any of these limestones, visit our blog on www.naturalstone-outlet.com/blog.

Thank you for listening!