"What thickness should I order?" is the most common question we get at our Cranleigh showroom. The answer depends on what's going on top of the stone — feet, cars, garden furniture — and what's going underneath it. This guide gives practical figures for each common use case, plus the engineering reasoning behind them so you can make an informed call on the borderline cases.
Available thickness ranges
Yorkstone is cut and sold in several thickness ranges depending on the finish:
- Sawn Yorkstone: calibrated to 25mm, 30mm, 35mm, 40mm, 50mm, 60mm and 75mm. Each piece within ±2mm of nominal. The most predictable to lay.
- Riven Yorkstone: nominal 38mm, with variation from ~30mm to ~50mm across pieces. The riven faces are hand-split, which is what creates the variation.
- Reclaimed Yorkstone: typically 50–100mm but often more variable. Some pieces are 150mm — these are the originals, cut deep for street use.
- Aged Yorkstone: calibrated as for sawn, then weathered. Available in the same precise thicknesses.
- Bespoke: any thickness can be cut to order at our Yorkshire stoneyard. See our bespoke service for details.
Patio (foot traffic)
Recommended: 30–40mm calibrated, or 38mm nominal riven.
A residential garden patio carries foot traffic, occasional patio furniture loads, and the standing weight of one or two people at a time. The dead load is light. The thickness requirement is dictated by the bedding mortar's ability to transfer load to the sub-base evenly — not by the stone's own strength.
30mm sawn Yorkstone, properly bedded on a compacted sub-base, will last fifty years on a garden patio without complaint. 40mm gives a bit more margin if the sub-base preparation is imperfect (and most sub-bases are). 50mm is over-engineered for foot traffic but looks subtly more substantial in the slab edges — a visual choice rather than an engineering one.
Riven Yorkstone at its nominal 38mm is fine for any patio. The thickness variation across pieces is absorbed by individual bedding — each slab gets its own bed depth.
Driveway (vehicle traffic)
Recommended: 50–60mm minimum, 75mm for heavy use.
A car axle distributes its load through four contact patches, each carrying around 300 kg over an area roughly the size of a paperback book. The point load is significant. A 50mm sawn Yorkstone slab, properly bedded on 150mm of compacted MOT Type 1, handles a domestic car easily.
For driveways that see larger vehicles — a builder's van, a delivery lorry, an SUV with a roof box loaded for holiday — step up to 60mm. The extra thickness gives you margin against the dynamic loading of braking and turning, where the contact patch deforms and edge loading peaks.
For commercial driveways, courtyards taking deliveries, or driveways that occasionally see a horse box or trailer, 75mm is the safer call. Bespoke thicknesses are available where the project warrants it.
A note on reclaimed: the original 100mm+ thicknesses of historical reclaimed setts are heroic, and substantially over-engineered for modern domestic vehicle loads. But if you have access to genuine 100mm reclaimed, by all means use it — the look is unbeatable, and the only cost is a slightly deeper excavation. Our reclaimed cobble range sits in this category.
Garden path
Recommended: 25–30mm calibrated.
A garden path between flowerbeds or to a shed is the lightest-duty paving installation in the catalogue. 25mm sawn Yorkstone is enough, provided the sub-base is properly compacted. The thinner stone reads more elegantly in a narrow path — too thick and the path looks heavy-handed in the planting.
Stepping stones — single slabs spaced across grass or gravel — can be thicker (40–50mm) because they read as deliberate set pieces. Round, square or random shapes all work; ask about bespoke cuts for non-standard sizes.
Indoor flooring
Recommended: 20–30mm calibrated sawn.
Yorkstone makes an exceptional indoor floor — kitchens, hallways, garden rooms, conservatories. Indoor use means no frost cycling, no UV degradation, no need for the structural depth that an outdoor patio carries. 20mm calibrated sawn Yorkstone, bedded on a screed, is plenty.
Indoor flooring is essentially the only domestic Yorkstone use where below-30mm thickness is on the table. It's also where the calibrated sawn finish wins decisively over riven — a smooth, flat floor matters more than rustic texture inside.
Coping stones and walling
Recommended: 50mm coping; walling-stone thickness varies by application.
Our Yorkstone coping stones are typically cut to 50mm — enough mass to weather British rain without lifting or shifting on a brick or stone wall. Wider walls (above ~225mm) can take 75mm coping if the proportions warrant. For unusual wall widths, our stonemasons cut to order — see the bespoke service.
Walling stone — the stone that forms the wall itself rather than the cap — runs anywhere from 100mm to 250mm in face depth depending on the construction method. Our walling stone page covers the variants and their applications.
Tolerance — what it actually means
"Calibrated to 50mm ±2mm" means individual pieces can be anywhere from 48mm to 52mm. For most applications this is invisible; the bedding mortar absorbs the variation. But on indoor flooring, where the floor must be dead flat for a wood-burning stove or kitchen units, the tolerance matters.
Sawn calibrated is the tightest tolerance (typically ±2mm). Riven varies more (typically ±5mm or more — that's the nature of hand-split stone). Reclaimed varies the most by an order of magnitude. Choose your tolerance to match what the project actually needs, not by assuming tighter is always better. Tighter calibration costs more, and on a country garden patio it isn't visible.
Practical recommendations
Three rules of thumb that hold up in 90% of projects:
- Domestic patio: 30–40mm calibrated sawn, or 38mm nominal riven. Anything thicker is over-spec; anything thinner is a sub-base bet you might lose.
- Domestic driveway: 50–60mm calibrated. 75mm if the driveway sees larger vehicles or commercial traffic.
- Indoor floor: 20–30mm calibrated sawn. The thinnest practical Yorkstone application.
For everything else — garden paths, stepping stones, coping caps, walling — see the relevant product page for the dimensions we stock and our bespoke options.
And if you're not sure which thickness applies to your project: send photographs of the site to our stoneyard team and we'll be honest about what to order. Free samples (one slab in your chosen thickness and finish) travel anywhere in the UK by post.
