Have you fallen in love with one of our samples but the product you received is darker than the examples you were shown? No need to panic. There are some easy explanations for the difference in appearance. In fact, the problem may resolve itself with a little time and you won’t need to worry about getting your order replaced.
The product stayed moist in the box.
All of our stone veneer is a combination of white and gray cement, lightweight aggregates, iron oxide pigmentation, and water. Our mix has a high moisture content, and most of that moisture has evaporated from our samples by the time you view them. If you open a box of our stone and you notice that the shade doesn’t exactly resemble the sample, it is likely because that water content has been trapped.
If this is the case, the veneer is not ruined. We package our veneer when it still has that higher moisture content and sometimes it hasn’t had a chance to aerate long enough. We’ve had the product still appear dark after being left in a box for 4 months since the packaging date. This moisture has not compromised the product. Leaving the veneer in sunlight or letting it have air movement will quickly pull that extra water from the stone. During consistent conditions, you’ll notice changes after 3 days.
The product has not been in dry enough climates.
Have you removed the veneer from the box and noticed little change over the next few days? The weather may have a part to play in that. The moisture of your location will affect the appearance of the stone. If our product is being applied in rainy, cloudy, or high-humidity neighborhoods, it won’t be able to fully dry against the building.
While we do often say that you’ll see the veneer lighten in a week, it may not be the intended shade until there are enough consecutive dry days. After a month from the day the product was delivered to a job site the true color of the veneer is usually visible.
What if the veneer is dried and it still isn’t the right color?
If you’ve waited for the veneer to lose the trapped moisture and the color is still off, please reach out to us. While each piece of veneer is not made to be an exact copy of a stone template, we do still have a general appearance that we strive to achieve. Each dispute filed is taken seriously at our facility to guarantee that each customer has received what they ordered. These are the steps you can take to let us know that your product is not as advertised.
- Send us side-by-side images of the sample and the boxed product for us to compare. Make sure that the setting of the pictures is the same. This means that placement and lighting should as identical as possible. We don’t want different tones and shadows in your images to result in an incorrect observation of your product.
- Unless a difference is undeniably obvious by the images filed with your dispute, an in-person review by one of our representatives will be scheduled. This review will often occur a month after the product has arrived at a job site. A postponing of the review may occur if there is significant rainfall around the time a member of our team was planning to look at the product.
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