Marmorino · 01Marmorino or polished plaster
People ask us to choose for them, so here is how we do it. If you want the wall to reflect, a hallway reading like a slab of dark stone, a dining room that changes as the light moves round it, that is polished plaster. If you want the wall to look like stone that has been honed rather than polished, with grain you can see across a room and feel with a hand, that is marmorino. Marmorino is also the calmer choice at scale. A whole room in high polish can be a great deal to live with. A whole room in marmorino reads as a surface rather than an event, and it is kinder to an imperfect wall, because grain scatters light where a mirror concentrates it.
Marmorino · 02How far it burnishes
Marmorino will take a compression pass, and the further you take that pass the closer it moves towards polished plaster. Left light, it sits close to matte, with the trowel marks reading as soft cloud. Worked harder it comes up to an eggshell or satin sheen with the grain still showing through it. Waxed, it deepens and picks up a low shine without ever becoming reflective. That range is the genuinely useful thing about the material: the same tub gives you a chalky bedroom wall or a hallway with some weight to it, and the decision is made with the trowel rather than by buying something different. We agree the level on a sample board before anyone starts a room.
Marmorino · 03The walls it forgives
Marmorino has more body than a polished finish, so it will sit over a wall that is sound but not perfect and take some of the unevenness out rather than advertise it. That makes it the sensible answer in older houses, where solid brick, old lime plaster and a century of small repairs are normal. It is breathable, which matters on a solid wall with no cavity, because the wall needs to let moisture move and a lime finish lets it. It also tolerates a fraction more movement than a high polish, so it is what we reach for on timber framed buildings and anywhere a hard brittle skin would craze within a season or two.
Marmorino · 04Colour on a matte surface
Colour behaves differently without gloss. A polished wall darkens and deepens as it is burnished. Marmorino stays much closer to the shade you picked, and pale tones in particular stay chalky and soft rather than going glassy on you. That makes it the easier finish to specify from a reference, and the better one if you are matching joinery, a stone floor or an existing paint. It is still not a flat colour, the grain and the direction of the trowel give it cloud, but the range of movement is narrower and more predictable. Tinting happens at our studio before the tub ships, so what arrives is already your colour. Look at it in daylight before you commit.
Marmorino · 05Whole rooms and ceilings
This is the finish we use when a client wants the material everywhere rather than on one wall. It goes on faster than a polish, it will run across a ceiling, and it takes internal corners and window reveals without the drama a reflective surface causes at a change of plane. The real constraint is the wet edge. A wall has to be finished in one go, because a joint that sets before the next pass reaches it will show as a line afterwards. That decides how a room is set out and how many of us turn up. A large open plan space is a two or three person job and we plan it that way from the start.
Where It Is The Wrong AnswerWhere marmorino is the wrong answer
Do not put marmorino inside a shower enclosure or a steam room. That is tadelakt’s job and no amount of wax changes it. If what you actually want is a wall that reflects, buy veneziano instead, because you will not burnish this to a mirror. And if the look you are after is flat, uniform and industrial, with no grain and no cloud in it, a concrete effect or a microcement will get you there and lime will not.
Yourself, Or UsLaying marmorino yourself
Of the classic Venetian finishes this is the one to learn on. There is no burnish window to miss, the grain hides small inconsistencies, and a bad pass can usually be rescued with another. If you are a decorator adding a finish to what you offer, marmorino is a sensible first purchase, and a few days at the Academy will have you laying it properly. If it is one room in your own house and you have never held a trowel, the wet edge is what catches people out.
Get a sample board, or the box of six, and hold them against your floor and your joinery in daylight. Once you have picked the grain and the sheen, ring 07592 929191 and we will talk about the room.
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