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Discover our range of Free Form Wall cladding: loose, irregular natural stone pieces at 25 to 40mm thick with flat sawn backs and special L shaped corners. These loose stone walling are available in many natural stone materials: travertine, limestone, sandstone and quartzite.
There’s a particular thing people ask for without knowing the name for it. They say I don’t want it to look like tiles. I want it to look like a stone wall without any rectangular sizes.
Here what they’re describing is Free Style or Free Form wall cladding and it’s worth saying upfront that it gives the installer more freedom than any other format. These loose irregular wall pieces have no fixed pattern to be followed and every change of direction becomes a part of the installation in itself.
It’s hard to get wrong stylistically with this walling. Every piece in a Free Style wall is a decision someone made on site about where it goes, what sits next to it and how the joints will run.
Basically, Free Style wall cladding are loose individual pieces of natural stone, irregular in shape with dimensions ranging from 150mm to 350mm and size that a stonemason arranges and installs one at a time rather than fixing as a pre-assembled panel. You’ll find this format being sold under many names such as freestyle walling, free form stone cladding, loose stone walling, loose stone cladding, random stone walling, irregular stone cladding and they’re all describing the same thing. Individual pieces which are placed by hand with nothing repeating.
| Attributes | Stone Planet Free Style |
|---|---|
| Supply format | Loose individual pieces of 150 to 300mm |
| Face geometry | Irregular and random shapes |
| Thickness | 25 to 40 mm approximately |
| Back | Flat and sawn cut |
| Corners | Full piece L-shaped pieces |
| Installation | Piece by piece by a skilled stonemason |
| Wastage allowance | Around 15% for a tight-butted look |
| Suitable for | Exterior and interior walls |
Every Free Style walling product has an average thickness range between 25 and 40 mm thick.
That spread does real work on site, in three places most people never think about until they’re standing in front of it.
Your installer has to adjust the bedding to bring the faces into line. A 26mm piece sitting next to a 39mm piece needs a different amount of adhesive behind it to end up with each other and a mason who has laid loose stone before builds that adjustment without thinking about it. Someone who is used to calibrating 10 or 12mm tiles finds their first Free Style wall considerably going slow.
Door and windows, gate posts, fence returns, downpipes and the existing render line needs to be accounted properly before ordering the stone and installation should be thought through.
And thicker pieces are heavier and require more adhesive. If weight is a genuine constraint on your project, you can move towards the lighter end from our range of Wall Cladding
Free Style walling pieces supplied by Stone Planet have a flat back with a sawn cut. Buyers ignore this but the stonemasons catch this detail first.
An irregular stone piece with an unsawn back (to be clear back means rear face or side of the wall cladding) is lumpy, unpredictable and has nothing flat to work against. It will be a difficult installation for the mason to fix the bed and consider the space at the back created by the different irregular pieces of stone. This takes a lot of time and needs adhesive at a rate that surprises the homeowners with the price of the job.
A flat sawn back removes almost all of those issues. The fixing required is now thinner and can be done more evenly. The walling face sits down instead of needing to be shaved and it comes into line without the fight. It will save a lot of installation time. Ask anyone who has laid both an unsawn and a flat sawn back loose stone wall and their quotations will give your answer fast.
Our corners are supplied as single L shaped pieces. One piece which is cut so it wraps the external corner and shows a stone face on both sides.
The alternative is mitring two flat pieces together at the corner. The edges after mitring become thin and often chips. And it also leaves a visible line running vertically up the corner of a wall. A single piece corner removes both problems at once.
Loose stone corner pieces cost more per piece than panelised alternatives. A pillar has four external corners. A single corner height is 1.8 metre for a pillar. It will need 7.2 linear metres of corner material on its own. Tell us how many pillars, piers or gate posts are in the design when you enquire and the first quote will actually be the right one.
Free Style walling goes up in two different ways.
Tight butted installation has pieces installed close together with barely any visible gap. The wall gives a look of a continuous field of stone. It looks contemporary and it demands better piece selection. Expect to allow an extra 15 to 20% of material on top of your base wastage figure for this look because your stonemason will be setting aside more pieces that don’t quite fit rather than filling the gap with grout.
Pointed installation leaves a deliberate joint usually around 10 mm and fills it with grout or mortar. This adds real depth to the wall. Mortar colour changes the finished look of a wall more than most people expect.
Avoid the most expensive mistake on a brand new Free Style wall.
Adhesive and mortar residue is the biggest threat to how a new stone wall will look. Picture framing and General staining are the main culprits in the initial days.
The normal approach for anyone is to reach for an acid wash to fix it because that’s what cleans mortar off brickwork. On travertine or limestone, that decision is not reversible. Acid dissolves the surface on contact and leaves a permanently dull patch that no amount of sealing can fix later.
Three things actually prevent these issues and all three are cheaper than the alternative. Seal the wall cladding before they go on the wall. Stone Planet recommends this for every walling and the cheapest insurance available on the entire job. Clean the residue while it’s still fresh and not at the end of the day. And always tell the cleaners on your site that it’s natural stone and not brickwork, before they touch it.
This is the common installation area for Free Style wall cladding. A long plain boundary wall shows off the these irregular stone installation better than almost any other application. A Free Style wall needs a capping that overhangs on the face and throws water in the clear.
The faces of our stone wall cladding are used over the retaining walls.
Free Style suits naturally with planting, gravel, timber and water in a way that a fixed format rarely manages.
Irregular pieces wrap a square pier elegantly especially with L-shaped corners on all four sides.
Free form wall cladding works around water with two things worth knowing. The water zones get constantly wet and dry. Here the stone selection matters more than anywhere else. Free Style can also be considered on suitable vertical walls around pools, water features and other splash-zone projects.
Free Style works indoors too. The bland walls of your bedroom to your bathroom with real height and decent light will disappear with these irregular loose stone cladding.
Fireplace surrounds are the most common interior application and the format’s texture suits a formal or a rustic mantel well.
Stone Planet supplies the stone and does not install it. But we can give you some insghts into installing them as well.
The wall gets prepared first. It can be rendered blockwork, brick, concrete or a properly prepared masonry flat, sound, clean and dry wall. Off form concrete usually needs rendering because nothing bonds well to a glass smooth surface that may still be carrying release agent from the formwork.
The pieces come out of the crate and get sorted before anyone touches the wall. This is the step that separates a genuinely good wall from an average one and it’s the step most tempted to skip. Your stonemason spreads the material out, groups it loosely by size and sets the biggest and best faced pieces aside for eye level.
A dry lay goes down on the ground first, two or three square metres arranged roughly as it will sit. It’s the only chance to see the installation before adhesive makes it permanent and it barely takes twenty minutes.
Loose stone walling is built from the bottom and the first few stones carry the weight of everything above it while the adhesive develops strength. A temporary ledger keeps that first row together rather than letting it sag overnight. It comes off the next day, and the last row goes in underneath it.
Corners go on before the middle section of the wall with the long and short sides as they are installed. Then each piece gets buttered and bedded properly. It is pressed and tapped properly with a rubber mallet until the face sits in plane with its neighbours.
Bigger pieces get supported while the adhesive set, with wedges or a temporary prop where needed.
A stonemason forcing a Free Style wall to full height installation in a single session is telling you something about how that wall is going to look in twelve months.
Stone Planet offers Free Style wall cladding in many natural stone materials. Most common are travertine, limestone, quartzite and sandstone because these stones hold their character well in natural split finish at this thickness.
View information about these materials at: Travertine, Limestone, Sandstone, Granite.
Both formats supplied by Stone Planet are loose individual pieces and both genuinely need a skilled installer rather than a general tiler. What separates them is geometry and it changes almost everything about the look and feel of the wall.
| Attributes | Free Style | Traditional |
|---|---|---|
| Geometry | Irregular, random pieces | Regular rectangles and squares |
| Sizes | 25–40 mm thick | 500 × 250 × 30 Or 600 × 300 × 30 mm |
| Layout | Created by eye on the day of installation | Set out to follow grids and lines |
| Cutting | Minimal cutting as pieces are selected to fit | Regular to close every joint and corner |
| Character | Landscape, organic, informal | Architectural, ordered, formal |
| Other Names | Free form, loose, random, irregular stone wall cladding | Ashlar, rockface, coursed wall cladding |
If a panel suits the project better than individual pieces, check out Stacked Stone Walling Or Ledge Stone Walling. To understand the difference between panelised and loose stones, You can Read Our Stacked Stone Panels vs Loose Stone Walling comprehensive guide.
Stone Planet is an importer and wholesale supplier of these free form natural stone walling in Australia. Free Style walling is the format where a good supplier relationship matters most because the outcome rests on the mason rather than the material alone.
We’ll tell you the real thickness range, the back treatment and the corner system rather than a description of the look. Your installer will need those numbers to quote and set out the job properly.
We quote against the real quantity. The corners and pillars are counted separately from the flat area and wastage is also suggested for whichever joint style you chose. We can also arrange for custom finishes, thicknesses and dimension if the requirement is raised early while there’s still time to fit it into a production schedule and import timely.
Before you order, Read Natural Stone Wall Cladding: What to Check Before You Buy for making any decisions related to wall cladding.
You will need experienced tradesmen who can create an irregular wall and not just install stone to a line. Plenty of tilers can do it as well. But a tiler who has only fixed panels and calibrated tiles cannot justify it and it starts showing within an hour of the installation.
No. Many clients have started butting the free style wall cladding with barely any visible joints. Also with a deliberate mortar line can be a legitimate approache. Decide this before installation starts because it changes the material quantity required and the finished look of the wall.
You need to measure each external corner by its height and then add them together in linear metres (LM). Lets say your corners are of 2m height and there are 4 corners, then the total corner pieces required will be 8 LM (4 X2). Remember that each corner piece also reduces your face or flat material requirement slightly since it's covering part of both elevations at once.
The format of these free form stone cladding are irregular by nature so sizes vary piece to piece. Stone Planet can provide custom thicknesses on the basis of specific project requirements but a genuinely uniform Free Style piece will defeat the purpose of the format. If regular dimensions are what you're after, try Traditional Walling built for exactly that.
25 to 40 mm is the average thickness of Free form wall cladding. If you've seen a different figure quoted elsewhere for this product, it's out of date as 25 to 40 mm is the confirmed current standard in Australia.
Yes, Free style walling clads to the face of the retaining wall. An engineered retaining wall does the actual retaining and our stone becomes the visible face of it.
Yes. Free Style walling is Stone Planet loose irregular natural stone wall cladding format. Buyers also call it loose stone walling, random stone cladding, free form wall cladding irregular stone walling and free form walling.
