Designing with marble
STARTING OUT ‘I choose the marble before anything else in the room and then the scheme evolves from there,’ says interior designer Sarah Southwell. ‘I then pick out colours and textures to create a scheme that complements the marble. Then you need to decide if you wanted it honed (matt), which I prefer, or polished (shiny), the type of edge and the thickness. I normally go for 20mm as it saves on cost and still looks great.’ When working with marble (or, indeed, onyx), the most important thing is the slab selection, adds Karen Howes, co-founder of Taylor Howes – she recommends visiting the stone yards in Italy to hand select slabs.
BE CREATIVE Marble is more versatile than many people realise, believe Angus and Charlotte Buchanan of Buchanan Studio. ‘We love to use it to elevate details and touchpoints around the home such as on a mantelpiece, or on a shelf,’ they say. ‘We also use offcuts for displaying objects such as on a coffee table.’ Another aspect of its versatility is that it can present as traditional and yet also modern. Karen says her team love to use marble ‘in every project’ in conventional ways – for kitchens and bathrooms. ‘But we also like to use marble in more creative and abstract situations such as within furniture, bar fronts and the backs of bookcases where pieces are thinly cut and backlit.’
MIX AND MATCH There’s no need to only use one type of marble. ‘We love the organic feel and pattern of marble and like to try, as long as they are tonally similar, to mix marbles for a great effect,’ says Victoria Gray of Olivine Design. ‘Recently we used honed marble for a bathroom floor then a darker, polished marble for the washstand to create impact – it also allowed us to be creative with the window and wall treatments.’
CARING FOR MARBLE Marble is long lasting, cool to touch and anti-bacterial making it ideal for kitchens and bathrooms. These days, it’s something of a myth that marble is a high-maintenance material – especially with advances in sealant technology seeing some manufacturers offering 10-year guarantees against stains, s
