Cultured Stone

Cultured stone is made from concrete, aggregate, and iron-oxide pigments cast in rubber molds taken from real stone, then colored and textured to look like the material it's copying. Because it weighs a fraction of full-bed natural stone, it doesn't need its own footing the way a structural stone wall does, which is why it works well over an existing framed wall or foundation that wasn't built to carry stone. It's installed over a scratch coat and metal lath, or as interlocking panels, directly onto sheathing or block, and the color runs through the mix instead of sitting on the surface as paint, which is why it holds its look longer than a stone-look coating would. It comes in styles that mimic fieldstone, ledgestone, and cut ashlar, so a lot of the visual choices available in natural stone are available here too, at a lower weight.

Since cultured stone is only a facing, all the protection has to happen behind it: proper flashing, a weep screed at the base, and a drainage gap so any water that gets behind the stone can escape instead of sitting against the wall sheathing. In a climate that freezes and thaws all winter, that trapped moisture is what causes real damage, so the installation detailing matters more here than the stone product itself does. A well-installed cultured stone facing and a poorly installed one can look identical on day one and behave very differently five winters in, which is exactly why we treat the flashing and drainage work as the real job and the stone as the finish layer on top of it. Manufacturer installation guidelines exist for a reason in this climate, and skipping steps in them is where most veneer failures start.