Have you ever thought that stones can also transmit light like glass? Although it sounds a bit incredible, nature has indeed created many wonderful “translucent” stones. These stones seem to come alive when light flows through them, radiating a soft, dreamy radiance. Which then are transparent stones? Today, let’s unveil these magical stones and explore the stories behind them.
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Marble: elegant dancer of light and shadow.
Common building and decorative stone that you might be most familiar with is marble. Marble comes in pure white, gray, beige, etc. tones as well as others. The natural texture inside these soft-toned marbles will show a soft light and shadow effect as if dancing elegantly for you.
This light and shadow effect makes marble particularly suitable for decorative designs, such as bathroom dressing tables, restaurant walls, or the lobby floors of luxury hotels. Marble can exhibit its special appeal and take the stage in the room day or night.
Agate: Colorful Magic Stone
Speaking of translucent stones, how can we miss agate? The magical stone is agate. Its translucency shows intricate textures and rich color layers as light passes through the stone. Agate’s colors are very diverse, from warm red and orange to cool blue and green. Each piece of agate is like a work of beauty delicately crafted by nature.
In decoration, agate is often used to make tabletops, wall decorations and even art sculptures. Agate will reveal a strange and beautiful brilliance through backlighting, which makes people sigh at the amazing artistry of nature.
Quartzite: Transparent Beauty in Toughness
Quartzite, at first glance, seems to be a very hard stone, but did you know? Actually, it’s a translucent stone! Quartzites consist of lots of quartz particles. When light penetrates these particles, it will form a unique sense of transparency on the surface of the stone. Usually lighter in hue, quartzite looks softer beneath the light in white, beige, or light gray.
Because quartzite combines beauty and durability, it is very popular in the fields of architecture and design. Kitchen counters, bathroom walls, and even some outside decorations feature quartzite. When quartzite softly glows beneath the light, the entire area seems to be filled with pleasant energy.
Jade: The warm luster in ancient culture
Fascinating translucent stone is also jade, a rock with great significance in Chinese culture. Whether it is the warm Hetian jade or the emerald green jadeite, jade is regarded as a rare treasure because of its unusual translucency. When light passes through jade, the shine it produces is not simply on the surface, but organically flows from the inside of the stone, giving people a calm and warm feeling.
Jade is not only popular in decoration, but also used to make jewelry and crafts. Jade was considered in antiquity as a sign of authority and prestige. These days, it usually connotes grace and beauty. Whether you wear it on your body or put it in your home, the radiance of jade will bring you endless charm.
Agate: The colorful magician of light and shadow
Like a natural palette, agate is a quite unique stone with layers and colors. In translucent agate, the light changes with the layers inside the stone, showing a wonderful light and shadow effect. The colors of agate range from bright red and blue to soft pink and yellow. Agate can add a vivid hue whether it is for artistic work or decorating.
If you want to add some unique decorative elements to your home, you might as well consider agate. Agate may create a mysterious and sophisticated ambiance in your house whether it is a wall inlay or a desktop ornament.
Granite: Delicate luster in solidity
Granite usually gives people the impression of a hard and durable building material, but in fact, some granites also have translucent properties, especially those with lighter colors. Light’s subtle brilliance when it passes through these granites gives the stone smooth texture.
In modern design, granite is often used for floor and wall decoration. Through backlighting, the gloss of granite is further amplified, and the whole space appears more refined and textured.
Flint: The Light Messenger of the Primitive Age
Flint, a stone used as tools and weapons in ancient times, is also a stone with translucent properties. The low-key and enigmatic brightness of light shining through flint will be evident. Usually darker, flint gives one a weighty and old impression.
Although flint is not common in modern life, it can still be found in museums and ancient buildings. When you get the chance to view this ancient stone, you could as well investigate its translucent qualities and picture how people utilized this stone to ignite fire and enlighten the dark night thousands of years ago.
Kyanite: Dreamy Blue Light
Fascinating translucent stone is kyanite, a gem famed for its unusual blue and transparency. When light shines through kyanite, the stone emits a deep blue light like the ocean, as if taking you into a dreamy world.
Kyanite is often used to make jewelry and decorations. The wearer appears more elegant and enigmatic from its dreamy luster. If you are a blue lover, you really cannot miss kyanite.
The magical creation of nature has given us these beautiful translucent stones. They are works of art allowing light to travel through and exhibit enigmatic light and shadow, not only hard stones. Whether it’s the dreamy blue of kyanite, the colorful agate, the elegance of marble, or the warm glitter of jade, these translucent stones can provide your living area varying visual delight. In your next design project, why not try to incorporate these translucent stones into it and feel the charm of light and shadow they bring!
Frequently Asked Question (FAQ）
How Translucent Stone Slabs Can Brighten Up Your Space？
Translucent slab, in simple terms, is a natural stone that allows light to pass through. Unlike regular stone, it keeps its original color and texture and can be backlit to create an attractive and enigmatic visual impact. This feature makes translucent stone slab widely used in various design projects, from luxurious hotel lobbies to exquisite home spaces, it can bring amazing effects.
Marble, quartzite, agate and granite are the most often found translucent natural stones available nowadays. Each stone has its own unique light transmittance and aesthetic effect, suitable for different design needs. Marble, for instance, is prized for its soft textures and warm colors; agate appeals for its vivid color variations and distinctive layering.
The company is the world’s best Translucent Light stone manufacturer supplier. We are your one-stop shop for all needs. Our staff are highly-specialized and will help you find the product you need.
We create backlit features around the world, and typically execute 10 to 15 unique projects each year. Each phase of these projects is completely custom, and we guide it from design through installation in a delicate balance of integrating surfaces, structure, and lighting.
As designers entrust us with the concept for their backlit feature, we then carry it through design development, engineering, fabrication, shipment to site, and full installation. We most commonly work with architects, interior designers, and lighting designers in the concept phases of their projects. In those early phases we can help with cost analysis, recommendations for detailing, selecting a surface, and specifying our system. As the project progresses through the bidding process we coordinate heavily with the general contractor to win the award of the subcontract, then complete our full engineering, full fabrication, and see the feature through to construction.
In our turnkey scopes, we are handling the surface, structure, and lighting all together as one package. With these full scopes, here is an outline of the materials and services we provide:
- Supply of translucent surface (such as onyx, wood, glass, resin, fabric)
- Supply of backlighting system, wiring, and controllers
- Development, mock-up, and schematic drawings of backlighting system
- Full structural engineering detail drawings and calculations
- Fabrication of all components
- Coordination with general contractor and subcontractor for installation preparation
- Full installation of surface panels, backlighting system, and structural elements
With less complex applications we may, for example, simply supply the lighting or the surface, but our real passion is integrating the two.
We are very passionate about our translucent surfaces, we literally go on a quest to find the perfect materials for you. Our surfaces are like works of art that embody the spirit of a project and we find something that speaks to you and your space, not a material that someone else deemed was appropriate to stockpile.
Because the natural stone and wood materials we use vary so much from slab to slab / flitch to flitch, over our 18 year history we have found that stocking samples has only gotten us in trouble in using samples for material selection purposes. We don’t stock any type of material, either for production or sampling purposes. That allows us to find the best surface material for each project – discovering a match that the client loves, ensuring it is available in the right sizes and quantity, has the right translucency levels for the lighting environment, etc.
Often companies will buy bundles in bulk and stock those materials in a warehouse, making your selection limited to what they have there in that building. We don’t like to be hindered by what’s “in stock”, so for every project, we will actually send our geologists to several sources around the world to find the stone for you. We often source extremely rare varieties, not something readily available in a catalog – we don’t like to be hindered by those kinds of parameters. Mother Nature has so much to offer, and we think she is ultimately the best source for finding the perfect material!
The best way to evaluate our materials is via high resolution photographs and then at mock-up with the appropriate backlighting design. For specific cases, we may have small leftover pieces of materials that you can borrow temporarily. To begin to discuss the material selection process, share your design intent with us and we can strategize together.
Our thin Infuse™ Flat-Lite™ LED Panels provide an even distribution of light in the tightest of spaces.
Overall assembly depth depends on the translucency of the surface being backlit, amount of available space, necessity of diffusers, and support method.
We find it important to consider the surface in conjunction with the light source so that all hot spots are eliminated. Our designers sometimes specify the Flat-Lite™ LED panels to be placed directly to the back of the surface being illuminated but sometimes they’re placed up to 3″ behind. If you have limited space or highly translucent surface, GPI has several light diffusion strategies that can help eliminate hot spots and blend the light.
GPI performs physical testing and trials to determine the ideal lighting cavity for each project. Just send surface selection, specifications, samples and drawings and we can begin to develop your custom solution.
If you would like to take a look at how we detailed specific backlit features, download our case studies.
We deliver fully integrated systems of floors, ceilings, walls, curtain walls, reception desks, and bars, so the structural requirements vary with each application.
GPI engineers and fabricates a custom structural system per project. Methods include: structural steel angles, extruded aluminum, z clips, stand-offs, wood framing, suspended systems and hidden rear mounted supports.
Our structural systems seamlessly integrate the translucent surface with the LED backlighting: eliminating structural shadow lines to properly showcase the illuminated surface, allocating room for wiring and possible light diffusers, and holding both the surface and the light in proper relation to one another for maximum lighting performance. On the finish surface, the hardware of the structure can be expressed or concealed, depending on the design intent.
Send us your drawings and we can provide insight into the proper structural or fastening system for your project.
Infuse™ Flat-Lite™ LED panels feature embedded energy-efficient, high output LEDs along the edges of an 8 mm (5/16″) acrylic panel. Laser-etched channels distribute light across the face of the flat panel, providing uniform light distribution for seamless backlighting of translucent architectural surfaces.
GPI does not stock sizes – we custom manufacture all our Infuse™ Flat-Lite™ LED panels per order. Contact GPI with architectural drawings for guidance in sizing LED panels. We base our recommendations on panel size(s) of surface material being backlit, amount of wire exits per panel, total electrical load on the power supplies, intended brightness levels, and ideal panel proportion for even light diffusion. We will also recommend on how many sides of the panel the LED strings should run: 1, 2, 3, or all 4.
Infuse™ Flat-Lite™ LED panels can backlight nearly any type of translucent surface, including natural stone, recycled glass panels, PVC stretch fabric, resin panels, acrylic, screens- anything that transmits light or is perforated.
Infuse™ Flat-Lite™ LED panels work well for illuminating feature walls, suspended ceiling panels, reception desks, bar countertops, stair treads, signage, and custom light fixtures.
We can engineer our Infuse™ Flat-Lite™ LED panels for exterior applications if certain conditions are met. Contact GPI for additional guidance on designing with LED panels in exterior environments.
We manufacture Infuse™ Flat-Lite™ LED panels in custom shapes and curved edges, but cannot thermoform or bend in three dimensions. For radius walls, LED panels can be faceted around a curve. GPI offers supplemental lighting methods to achieve even lighting on curved surfaces. Contact GPI for design consultation and detailing backlit curved forms.
Infuse™ Flat-Lite™ LED panels can be drilled in the field if holes occur at least 3 inches from the perimeter of the panel. We highly recommended that you contact GPI before drilling, as field alterations will void the product warranty. GPI can manufacture the LED panels with cutouts, special shapes, or sizes. Cutouts produced in the factory do not interfere with the product warranty.
For more information, please visit Luminous Translucent Resin Panels.
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