Colour
The Colour of Amazonite Quartzite Changes With the Light. That Is the Point of It.
A slab that reads mint under north light can read blue-green under an evening lamp. Here is what causes it, and how to specify a stone that moves.
The most common disappointment with this stone is not that it looks different from the photograph. It is that the same slab looks different twice in the same room. That is not a supply problem and it is not a defect. It is what a stone with its own colour does, and a buyer who has only seen it under showroom lighting is being asked to make a decision they have not been given enough information to make.
Why the colour moves
The blue-green in this quartzite comes from inclusions within the stone rather than from a surface pigment, so what you see depends on how much light is returning from within it. Under cool daylight, and particularly indirect north light, the stone reads greener and lighter. Under warm artificial light, the same surface pulls further towards blue and the warm banding becomes more obvious.
Two things follow from that. First, a project photographed in daylight and reviewed in the evening will not match, and that is worth saying out loud to a client before the stone is ordered rather than after it is installed. Second, a stone specified next to others should be approved with all of them present under the lighting it will actually live in.
What this means for a room
This movement is usually the reason the stone gets chosen. A material that holds its colour under every light reads as flat by comparison, and the rooms it is used in tend to feel like they were lit for a photograph. The practical consequence is that the palette around it should be able to absorb both readings: warm neutrals, timber and off-whites work, and a second cool grey stone next to it will look wrong in one of the two light conditions.
We would rather say that plainly than let a client discover it on site. A blue-green quartzite in a room lit warm at night wants a quieter surround than the same stone in a daylit room, and the difference is worth a conversation before the order rather than after the delivery.
How to approve it properly
Ask for slabs, not photographs, and look at them in more than one light. Look at them wet if the fabrication method allows, because the colour deepens temporarily and that is closer to the sealed result. Look at them from two metres as well as from arm’s length, because a feature wall is judged at a distance and a bar top at close range, and a stone that looks busy close up can read calm from across a room.
If a project is at the stage where photographs are all that can be arranged, say so to whoever is supplying, and ask for the lot and the light condition the images were taken in. A supplier who cannot answer that is telling you something useful.
Where this leaves a specification
If you are specifying this stone for a room that has a specific lighting plan, tell us the room and the hours it is used, and we will select slabs against that rather than against a showroom. Lead time is 9-18 working days to FOB, quoted against a specific lot.
Questions this article answers
Where does Amazonite Quartzite come from?
From the Paraiba region of northern Brazil. The supply comes from a restricted deposit, which is why it is quoted lot by lot rather than as a standing stock item, and why a run for a single installation is matched before anything is cut.
How is Amazonite Quartzite usually used?
As a statement surface: mitred waterfall islands, luxury kitchen and bar tops, book-matched feature walls, and small-format backsplashes. The strength of the colour is the reason it is specified in one place rather than throughout a room, and a waterfall is the application that shows the movement best because the mitre presents two faces at once.
Filed under Colour