Plano
A pale limestone that holds a large surface without a break.
Croatian architectural and building limestone, from the Adriakamen and Plano Lithos quarries.
- Compressive strength
- 111.2 MPa
- Water absorption
- 0.97 %
- Böhme abrasion
- 21.8 cm³ / 50 cm²
How it looks
Plano runs close to white in the coarse finishes and settles to a faint beige once it is closed to a polish. Between those two there is no figure to speak of: nothing to lead the eye, no darker fields, and no direction the slabs have to be laid in.
That is what makes it a stone for large surfaces. Two hundred square metres of facade, or a floor running the length of a storey, hold together as one surface, with nothing to mark where one slab stopped and the next began.
Come closer and it is not empty. Sections through rudist shells show up in the pale ground, bivalves from the Cretaceous that built this carbonate platform; most read between one and three millimetres, a few reach five centimetres across. The laboratory classes it as a recrystallised limestone of organic origin at 98 per cent calcite, which is what the hand reads as an even grain.
The variation that does exist belongs to the stone. Tone shifts from block to block and with depth in the bench, and a coarse finish always looks whiter than a smooth one, because a broken face returns more light than a closed one. Against timber, glass, concrete and steel, Plano is the ground rather than the subject.
Colour: near white, faint beige
One stone, nine finishes
The finish decides how much light the surface gives back and how rough it is underfoot. Polished it mirrors and deepens in colour, bush-hammered it is broken open and lightens, and between them are the degrees chosen by whether the surface will ever be wet. All of it is done in our own plant at Plano.
- Raw block
- Before any finish
- Polished
- Mirror gloss, colour at its deepest
- Honed
- Matt and smooth, no glare
- Brushed
- Matt and smooth, no glare
- Sandblasted
- Finely rough, non-slip
- Bush-hammered
- A hammered, grainy face
- Sandblasted and brushed
- Roughened, then softened
- Bush-hammered and brushed
- Hammered, then brushed back
- Coarse bush-hammered and brushed
- Deeply hammered, then softened
- Split-faced
- A natural break, no tool on it
We send a sample of any finish on request, and photographs of the samples are being prepared. Until then we would rather not show a computed picture of the stone: a finish is chosen on how the surface looks in the hand, and no rendering stands in for that.
Where it is used
- external and internal floors
- stairs, treads and risers
- pool copings
- wall copings
- terraces
- window sills
- wall cladding
- adhered and ventilated stone cladding
- fireplaces
- cut-to-size elements
Technical data
The figures are read from the accredited laboratory’s report, which is downloadable below. Strengths are mean values across a run of samples, as the standards require, rather than the best single result.
- Real density
- 2695 kg/m³
- Apparent density
- 2610 kg/m³
- Compressive strength
- 111.2 MPa
- Compressive strength after freeze–thaw
- 100.4 MPa
- Flexural strength
- 11.7 MPa
- Water absorption
- 0.97 %
- Absolute porosity
- 3.15 %
- Böhme abrasion
- 21.8 cm³ / 50 cm²
- Freeze–thaw resistance
- 25 cycles, 0.36 % loss
- Salt crystallisation
- 5 cycles, 0.74 % loss
- Calcite content
- 98.27 %
Technical documentation
The Declaration of Performance and the technical data sheet are sent on request.
Built in Plano
How it behaves over the years
Limestone darkens outdoors. How far and how fast depends on the aspect, on how close the planting is, and on how long the surface stays wet after rain: a north facade under trees patinates on a different schedule from a south-facing terrace.
None of that goes deeper than the surface. It touches neither the strength nor the life of the stone, and it is not a sign that the surface has failed. A professional clean lifts it and brings back most of the original appearance; in between, a product made for natural stone is enough.
Never acid. Limestone is calcium carbonate, so acidic cleaners etch it instead of cleaning it, and a single pass leaves a dull mark that no later treatment takes out.
How does it hold up to winter outdoors?
It holds up, and that has been measured. After twenty-five freeze–thaw cycles the sample lost 0.36 per cent of its mass and was rated resistant, and its compressive strength still came in at 100 MPa afterwards, ninety per cent of where it started.
And salt air?
The same sample took five cycles of salt crystallisation for a loss of 0.74 per cent. It carries no sulphide sulphur either, which in a pale limestone is the first thing worth asking about: sulphides are what surface years later as rust staining.
Will every slab look the same?
No, and no natural stone will. Plano is among the quietest of them, but tone shifts from block to block. Where a surface has to be read as a whole, slabs are selected from a single block, and that is settled when the order is placed rather than on site.
Which finish belongs on a surface that gets walked on wet?
Sandblasted or bush-hammered. Both open the face up so a foot has something to hold, where polished and honed go slippery as soon as they are wet. The Böhme abrasion figure of 21.8 cm³ per 50 cm² applies whichever finish you choose, since what wears is the stone and not the treatment.
Can it be cut to size?
Yes. Facade panels are cut to the drawing and drilled for anchors, treads are made together with their risers, and moulded elements are run on the profiling machine. All of it in our own plant at Plano.
Get a quote
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