Do you assume a sealer?
Only when the finish schedule or the stone supplier’s care instructions for that finish call for one. Honed and polished faces are not automatically the same maintenance scope.
Tile and slab
Stone floors are set, not just counted
Worked crate count for calibrated tile
Uses the 5–10% stone-tile planning band already published on this site. Illustrative coverage.
- Lobby stone tile, one item: 1,100 sq ft net.
- Illustrative 8% cut allowance: 1,100 × 1.08 = 1,188 sq ft.
- If the crate covers 50 sq ft: 1,188 ÷ 50 = 23.76, so 24 crates.
- A 3/8 inch mortar bed, if specified, is quantified as volume and is not inside those 24 crates.
Marble, limestone, travertine, slate, and granite do not share a thickness or a setting method because they share the word stone. The estimate has to say whether the floor is a calibrated tile in thin-set or a thicker slab on a mortar bed.
Tile module versus slab pieces
- Calibrated tile is ordered from crates or boxes using the stated coverage, with an allowance for cuts. Slabs and large pieces are a piece schedule: length, width, thickness, and finish. A square-foot total cannot be turned into slabs without the cut list.
Setting materials follow the method
- Thin-set coverage comes from the trowel and the mortar data sheet. A thick mortar bed is a volume: area times the specified thickness, with waste for the bed kept separate from waste for the stone. Grout or a tight joint is whatever the spec draws.
Movement and lippage are design constraints
- Large stone over a moving joint needs the joint detail the documents show. Lippage risk is a reason to record tile size and the flatness requirement, not a reason to add a made-up percentage of extra stone.
Related reading: ceramic and porcelain, what a tile price has to include, measurement method.
Questions this page answers
Is stone waste the same as ceramic waste?
Use a layout allowance in the published band, then look at piece size. A 24×24 module and a 6×12 module do not cut the same way in the same room.