If you've priced up a patio recently, you'll have run into Indian sandstone. It's the natural stone we lay most around Nottingham, and there's a simple reason: it looks proper, it wears well, and it costs a fair bit less than porcelain while you're at it.
It's not the right choice for every garden though, and the colour names on the supplier websites tell you almost nothing. So here's what the stuff is actually like to own.
Key takeaways
- Indian sandstone is a natural riven stone, so every slab varies in tone and texture, and that's the appeal
- Raj green and kandla grey are the two colours we get asked for most
- It doesn't have to be sealed, but sealing makes stains easier to shift
- How it's laid matters more than which colour you pick: full mortar bed, primed slabs, proper falls
Why It's on Half the Patios in Nottingham
Indian sandstone is quarried in big riven slabs, which means the surface is naturally uneven, with ripples and tone changes from slab to slab. Lay thirty of them and no two are the same. On a finished patio that reads as warmth and character, where a man-made slab can look a bit flat.
It's also hard wearing. There are sandstone patios around the city that have been down twenty years and look better now than the day they were laid, because the stone weathers in rather than wearing out.
And the price is the clincher for a lot of people. Slab for slab it's one of the cheapest ways to get natural stone paving down, which leaves more of the budget for the bits that make a garden work, like decent edging, lighting or a bigger seating area.
The Colours, in Plain English
Raj green is the big seller. Despite the name it's mostly buff and brown with grey and the occasional green tint running through, and every pack is different. It suits older houses and planted gardens because it already looks settled in.
Kandla grey is the modern pick. Cool grey tones, a bit more consistent than raj, and it works with grey composite fencing and crisp rendered walls. If you like the porcelain look but not the porcelain price, this is the one to look at.
Rippon buff runs warmer, with sandy yellows through to soft pinks. It lifts a shady garden and looks its best in evening light.
Autumn brown is exactly what it sounds like, browns and plum tones. Less common these days but it hides leaf stains and muck better than anything else on this list.
If you can, go and see full slabs wet and dry before you choose. A 10cm sample square tells you nothing about a stone that varies this much, and rain changes all of them.
How We Lay It
This is where sandstone patios go right or wrong, and it's the bit you can't see in the photos.
Every slab goes onto a full wet mortar bed, never dabs of mortar at the corners. Dot and dab leaves voids under the slab, and voids mean rocking slabs and white salt stains bleeding up through the stone a year later. The back of each slab gets primed so it bonds to the bed properly, joints are pointed with a proper jointing compound, and the whole patio is laid to a fall so rain runs off it instead of pooling.
Sandstone slabs also vary slightly in thickness because they're riven, not machine cut. That's normal, and it's why the bed under each slab gets adjusted individually. It takes longer than laying a calibrated porcelain, but it's the difference between a patio that's flat for twenty years and one that rocks in eighteen months.
Then there's the laying pattern. Most Indian sandstone paving arrives as a mixed-size patio pack, four or five slab sizes meant to be laid in a random pattern with no long straight joints. Done right it looks effortless. In practice it takes a surprising amount of planning to stop four corners meeting in a cross or three same-size slabs lining up in a row, which is the sort of thing you only notice once it's pointed and permanent.
We did exactly this on a recent job pairing a sandstone patio with gabion retaining walls, and you can see how the stone looks across a whole garden in that project.
💡 Tip: Buy all your slabs from one batch, plus about 10% spare. Sandstone colours shift between quarry batches, and a top-up pack ordered six months later rarely matches.
Living With It: Sealing and Cleaning
Left alone, sandstone weathers. It darkens a touch, grows a bit of character, and most owners like it that way. The upkeep is a wash down with a stiff brush and patio cleaner once a year, usually in spring when the winter algae shows up.
The one to keep an eye on is black spot, the dark lichen that gets a grip on sandstone after a few years in the shade. Ordinary patio cleaner barely touches it, so it needs a dedicated black spot remover, and the earlier you catch it the easier the job. Ten minutes with the right bottle in year three beats a full weekend of scrubbing in year six.
Sealing is optional. What a sealer buys you is time when something spills: BBQ fat, engine oil, red wine. On unsealed stone those want wiping up quickly; on sealed stone they sit on the surface long enough to clean off properly. If your patio is where the BBQ lives, sealing is worth the money. If it's a quiet spot with a bench and some pots, save it.
What an Indian Sandstone Patio Costs
The honest answer is that the stone is the smaller share of the bill. What moves the price is everything underneath and around it: digging out, the sub-base, drainage if the garden needs it, cutting around steps and manholes, and how easy it is to get materials to the back of the house.
As a rule of thumb, sandstone comes in noticeably cheaper than porcelain for the same size patio, mostly on the material cost. Where the ground needs real work, the difference narrows, because the groundwork costs the same whatever goes on top.
Thinking about a sandstone patio?
Send us a photo of the garden and a rough size and we'll quote it properly, itemised, with the groundwork priced honestly rather than discovered later.
Final Thoughts
Indian sandstone earns its popularity. It's natural, it lasts, and it's the most patio you can get for the money. Pick the colour from full wet slabs, insist on a full mortar bed, and decide on sealing based on how you'll use the space. Get those right and it'll still be a good looking patio when the trampoline's long gone.
If you're weighing it up against porcelain or composite decking, our patios and decking page shows both, or just ask and we'll talk it through.