Honed Smooth Finish

Honed is a term associated with the finish of natural stone tiles. A honed finish is even, smooth in texture, and generally matte, as opposed to a polished finish which is a shiny and glossy.

Honed finishing is the one of the most common processes for marble. A honed finish refers to any level that is less than polished and therefore the surface is smooth but dull or slightly reflective. In areas with a lot of foot traffic, floor tiles are often honed and not polished.

Honed marble has an old-world look and almost buttery feel, but it resists scratches and stands up to high-traffic areas.

Honed surface finish is produced by grinding a surface with high grit material to a uniform specification, without producing a reflective surface. Honed stone colors are not as vibrant as polished stones. A smooth finish with a slight sheen is produced by using a polishing head. This surface is very smooth, but often very porous.

In honing, rubbing is achieved by a process similar to polishing abrasion, but without the resultant shine. Large production machines are also called polishing trains, and these are equipped with multiple heads that mount different abrasive grain per head and rotate on fixed benches along the process chain.

For small areas, this can be performed manually by means of articulated arm polishers. These achieve flat, smooth surfaces, dull and without any visible mark, provided the tone is darker than other terminal, highlighting the structure, texture and colors of the stone. This process is often applied to polished stones that do not reach the necessary degree of crystallization.

We could say that rubbing down is the first step to achieving brightness. This finish is applied in compact rock, with a minimum degree of hardness. As the polishing is achieved by abrasion, and in these cases it is most common to use conventional abrasives such as silicon carbide.

It is a finish that makes the surface of natural stone smooth and matted, without or with limited reflection of light. The same method and abrasive materials are used to achieve this finish as in polished finish, but polishing stops at an earlier stage and the stone is not buffed. The surface has a lighter shade but the overall color and depth of the stone are preserved.