Pebble Shower Flooring Pros and Cons
Pebble shower flooring is slowly taking the hearts of many homeowners. With its appealing sight, creative installation, and spa feel, it’s a major competition against tiles and marble flooring. However, it has its upsides and downsides.
It looks amazing in modern-contemporary and hobo shower designs. Its pros include easy installation, slip resistance, ability to mix colors, and natural. However, it has a short lifespan, it uses a lot of grout, and it is not easy to maintain.
The choice as to whether to go for or against pebble stone shower flooring isn’t as straightforward as you may think. Which is why you need to read through this article. We shall take you through an in-depth look into this type of flooring, its features, pros, and cons.
Pros
Now that you have an idea of what this type of shower flooring is, let’s look at its advantages.
Easy to Install
Pebblestone installation is all about arranging the stones to your liking then add a sealant or a coat. It’s a simple DIY that you can door on your inside or outside the shower floor.
However, even though the process is simple, it does require patience to lay the pebble stones, plus you will need more than just a few stones to fit your bathroom floor.
Nonetheless, installing the flooring is easy and quite engaging.
Easy on the Pocket
Installing pebble stones is actually one of the cheapest shower flooring options available. Even with store-bought pebbles, purchasing the stones, and additional materials needed for installation, the total is cost-efficient compared to other options.
With a few working tools, pebble stones, sealant, grout, and a thinset, that’s all you need to get started. Unlike tiling solutions, you need a tile cutter, multiple tiles, grout again, among other things. Pebble stones are a better option in terms of cost.
Slip Resistant
Stones have been known to add traction to the bathroom. Slipping is very common with tiles, but with stones, they have a solid footing especially if your using slippers or otherwise.
However, even without slippers, your feet are secure on the stones, you can easily walk over and even dance on the floor. The grip aids to prevent unnecessary falling that could lead to injuries, serious or other.
Beautiful Finishes
As mentioned time and time again, pebble stone shower flooring is aesthetically pleasing. Easy on the eyes and very soothing to look at. What’s more, the design goes along with most if not all types of interior decor. From contemporary to farmhouse, hobo chic to luxurious. The look matches seamlessly with other interior designs. A spa look to fit any type of bathroom you want.
Comfortable
Lastly, pebble stones are very soothing to stand or step on. Even with their unevenness, they have a massaging effect on your feet, which is pleasant especially after a long day.
Natural, small, and round-shaped pebbles will offer this advantage over any other types of pebbles, including a square shaped and large stones.
Cons
Unfortunately, there are two sides to a coin. For its disadvantages, there is quite a load of them. Let’s see which ones they are.
High Maintenance
First and foremost, pebble stone flooring is very complicated when it comes to cleaning and maintenance.
Unlike tiles where you use a towel to wipe over and drain excess water while cleaning, pebble stones have crevices that hide water, dirt, and soap residue.
This means it gets dirty faster causing you to clean more often than you would with other shower floor types. What’s more, you have to be gentle during cleaning.
Being too rough means you can easily damage or etch the stones while being too soft and gentle doesn’t guarantee the results of cleaning. If you’re not careful, mold and mildew will start to accumulate.
For longevity, it’s required if you constantly clean and dry your shower floor to ensure no issues in the long run.
Short Lifespan
Speaking of in the long run, pebble stone shower flooring doesn’t last as long as other types, especially terrazzo and even tiles.
With pebble stones, there are endless possibilities of what could go wrong. If the pebbles aren’t cracking or etched, the grout is coming off, or the epoxy coating is wearing off.
Even with superb installation, its longevity can’t be compared to tiles because the sealant and grout used in the installation of pebbles stones quickly fade away meaning repairs or another full installation. This only means you will spend more on this flooring type than you would with others.
Finishing Finesse
We have already established that installation is as easy as a simple DIY. However, they can be tricky sometimes.
Without proper guidance, you can end up with an uneven floor, excess grout, cracks, and an ugly looking bathroom floor. So in most cases, if you’re looking for the perfect finish, you will need an expert.
The purpose of an expert opinion is so they can easily measure out the area of installation, estimate the materials you will need, and lastly, they can even lay the sealant for you.
This way, you won’t have water seeping through the cracks of the floor causing it to eventually rot. These are not the type of problems you want to deal with.
High Usage of Grout
Grout is the cementitious product used to hold the pebbles together. It’s also used with tiles but for stone shower flooring, you will need to use a huge chunk of it.
Unfortunately, this is a major drawback because pebble stones naturally have mosaic square edges that don’t particularly fit against each other.
Even if you are fitting them manually, there will be a lot of gaps that need filling. Here’s where the grout comes in.
To understand better, using a huge chunk of grout may not be such a disadvantage. However, grout is cementitious and therefore porous meaning it absorbs water.
Absorbing water means the bathroom will remain wet most if not all the time leaving the area very susceptible to the growth of mold and mildew.
Moreover, it will look splotchy and darker in color, which then turns the beautiful pebble stones into ugly stones.
This brings us to the last disadvantage…
It Holds Water
Unless your bathroom is a slope, the water coming from the shower will simply sit on the floor for as long as it can. It will not drain and this causes a wet grout which then translates into mildew.
Either black, brown, pink, you name it! The only way to counter this is to exercise regular cleaning and drying of the floor, which then turns into disadvantage number one, expensive to maintain.
Features of Pebble Stone Shower Floors
What is a Pebble Shower Floor?
It’s a kind of stone that’s held together by epoxy resins that gives a natural aesthetic look to the interior of your home.
Pebblestone shower flooring is among the many floor material choices available in the market currently.
Compared to tiles, pebble stone flooring offers easy installation, more room creativity, plus its often a cheaper flooring solution.
This exceptional flooring structure is very resistant meaning you won’t have to deal with cracks in the stones or other flaws from marble and porcelain.
The stone pebbles often offer feet support and massage as well as traction and additional and a firmer grip. Pebblestone shower floors are great for home improvements in your bathroom.
The features of this type of flooring include;
Naturalistic
First and foremost, pebble stone shower flooring is known for the use of pebble stones. Often seen as a traditional home antique, using it as a shower floor solution adds the element of nature to your home.
Its main feature is being naturalistic. Just as you would see pebble stones, mosaics, and shells by the lakeside, it adds tranquility to space.
Real vs Faux
The making of the pebble stone. Some of the pebble shower floors are made from actual pebbles. No shaping or manipulation whatsoever.
There are also two other types of pebble stones to fit people’s preference, that is; small rounded stones and faux pebbles.
Faux pebble stones are manufactured by major tile companies using clay and matte glazes to emulate the natural pebbles.
Because both stones can be aesthetically pleasing, it boils down to how the stone is made. Natural pebble stones already have a sturdy make. They can withstand heavy weights and even erosion making the stone extremely durable.
For the faux stones, they too have been manufactured with hard clay which too can withstand weight but tends to chip and loose colorfast. However, it can be manipulated to last longer.
Lastly, there are the porcelain pebble stones which also withholds its durability feature for being sturdy and long-lasting.
Creative
Pebblestone flooring adds a touch of creativity uncommon to other flooring solutions. You can have monochromatic or mix and matched stones in your shower, all dependent on your choices. What’s more, you also have a choice of what to use with the finishing, either grout, epoxy, or plain.
Lastly, pebble stones can be small, medium on in large sizes. So explore your creative side pebble stone flooring.
Traction
Lastly, pebble stones have one of the best grips when it’s wet or damp. They offer a firm and steady grip for your feet preventing you from slipping and falling in the shower.
What’s more, besides not feeling a slip, you instead get a massage feeling on your feet as the stones offer a spa sensation on your lower feet.
Note: if you notice a slip or reduction in grip while in the shower, your flooring could use some cleaning up to get rid of soap scum and residue that makes it slippery.