BLUE! Natural Stones for Interior Spaces

Few colors make as royal and striking an impact as blue. Natural blue stone very rarely forms in a volume large enough to use for architectural spaces. Some, such as Sodalite and Lapis Lazuli, are widely used in jewelry but can also be used to great effect in flooring, walls, and countertops.

Sodalite was first documented in 1811 in Greenland and is now mined in Canada and the U.S. Smaller deposits exist in Brazil, Bolivia, Portugal, Romania, Burma, Russia, Namibia, and Italy. For our use in the architectural field, Aalto typically sources Sodalite from Brazil, as it has the super-saturated royal blue tones that we are looking for.

Here are a few examples of slabs of Sodalite that we have used for past projects. In some cases, we use only small areas of the slab to create the designs; in others, we can use almost the whole slab.

Here, the rich tones of Sodalite are accented by the saturated hues of other natural stones in burgundy, grey and gold.

Another blue that we love to use in our designs is Lapis Lazuli. Lapis forms in smaller sections of blue and, as such, is pieced together to create the larger sections that we use in our flooring. Lapis has been used since antiquity. The Sar-i Sang mine in Afghanistan has been mined since the seventh century and is still the main source of Lapis today. Lapis can also be found in Russia, Chile, Italy, Mongolia, the U.S., and Canada.

Here, you can see some examples of inlay work by Aalto using Lapis Lazuli.

There are also other, more cost effective blues in lighter shades that are Quartzite and Onyx. These also look very beautiful when paired with other marbles.

Caribbean Blue