It's difficult to truly replicate the natural beauty of something like Travertine, Laura. However, Karndean and other luxury vinyl tile (LVT) manufacturers can get close and can offer additional benefits that Travertine cannot offer. Main points being the one you hit on… general maintenance. With a natural stone floor you will need to have some kind of routine maintenance factored into your "free time". Depending on the tiles thickness, you do also run the rick of potential cracks over time. Here's a reply we recently posted to a Houzz user posing a similar question: Karndean and Amtico are the brand LVT leaders. Amtico been about for 50+ years, Karndean 25+. They are great at marketing and their position in the market means you pay over the odds for what you get. They both deliver very, very good products and designs but compared to other reputable manufacturers on the market they are pricey. Viable man made alternatives with easier to live with on a day to day basis are: Amtico -> Click here for manufacturer's site. Click here to view on our site. Polyflor -> Click here for manufacturer's site. Click here to view on our site. Cavalio -> Click here for manufacturer's site. Click here to view on our site. Natural Solutions -> Click here or manufacturer's site. Click here to view on our site. If you want to learn more about the benefits and advantages behind luxury vinyl tiles (aka LVT), why not have a read of our blog, explaining all about Amtico by clicking here. Hope this is all helpful, Laura. We're cute, we're cuddly… we're the Flooring Gurus! t: 01622 790 356 e: info@flooringmegastore.co.uk Unsure of our credentials? Check out our independent, high scoring Trustpilot reviews here. We currently score 9.4/10

Many thanks for your comments but not not quite. I am new to stone effect porcelain so I am not describing it well. I found yesterday that it is known to bookmatch marble slabs to create an amazing marble mural and that there is a porcelain marble effect equivalent for example https://www.porcelain-tiles.co.uk/range/bookmatched/. It looks amazing but there is still a replicating pattern because it is "bookmatching". I am wondering if an artist / manufacturer has taken this a step further and created a large mural image requiring a large number of tiles to replicate a whole slice through a mountain of marble ... so the marble mural would be continuous not broken by the tiles and 100 tiles would be unique. And my question initially was about stone rather than marble so that the uniqueness is subtle .. but marble would be nice too.

I have Skimming Stone on bedroom walls with taupe blinds and duck egg accessories - it works well. Lots of different colours look good with S Stone IMO..

Speak to the planning department of the local council. Changes to the front of your house will require planning permission and they may tell you in advance that the balcony will be refused.