Travertine Wave Decor Natural Stone Tile (305 mm x 610 mm)

The flutes are machined, so their curve is exact and repeats identically down the tile. Travertine's cavities are not machined at all; they formed as gas voids when the stone was deposited around a mineral spring, and the milling cutter simply passes through them. Wherever a cavity falls on a crest or a trough, the clean sculpted line is interrupted by an irregular opening. The result is a wall that is precise and geological at once, and the tension between those two qualities is the reason to specify it.

It also softens the effect. A fluted profile in a hard, uniform stone produces crisp parallel highlights; here the pores scatter that light and the banding reads warmer and less mechanical, in sandy beige, biscuit and ivory.

As with any carved relief, angled light does the work. A fitting close to the wall and aimed along it will pick out both the flutes and the pores; flat frontal light flattens everything. This is a wall product, and a porous one: seal it before it goes up, and expect a textured face to take up more sealer than a sawn tile.