Your clients spend a lot of time outdoors, so deciding on the right patio pavers is one of the most important choices they will make. To help them personalize their outdoor living space, you could suggest adding borders and accents. Here are our tips for finding patio pavers from our landscape supply that make beautiful borders and accents in Bergen County, NJ.
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Brick
Brick is arguably the most versatile paver, and an excellent choice for artistic expression. Brick complements any architectural style and hardscape material. When it comes to natural stone, brick pairs equally well with rustic flagstone or bluestone, limestone, and sandstone. It also brings a touch of tradition, texture, and visual contrast to ultra-modern pavers to make modern outdoor spaces cozier.
Today’s choices go far beyond traditional clay brick in various shades of red, brown, and tan. Concrete brick-style pavers come in a larger variety of colors including blues and grays, charcoal, and various blended colors. Today’s brick choices also give more options when it comes to size and finishes. Traditional dimpled, brushed, smooth, or weathered are just a few of the choices that will help you guide your clients to the best style of brick for borders and accents.
Bricks can also be used as banding to accent outdoor kitchen walls, retaining walls, seat walls, pillars, fire features, and masonry water features and planters. This is a good solution for tying vertical and horizontal surfaces together.
Cobbles
Cobblestone roads may be charming, but these small rounded or square stones aren’t always practical for use on New Jersey driveways because it’s hard to shovel or plow uneven surfaces. However, they do make excellent borders that add a wonderful historic touch to walkways, patios, and driveways. Cobbles can also be used as decorative banding on any vertical surface.
Cobbles - whether natural stone or manufactured stone - come in a variety of finishes, including relatively rough or buffed to a timeworn sheen.
Cobbles and brick pair very well together if you want to create a dual-material border or accent on horizontal or vertical surfaces, or a dramatic inlay such as an outdoor “rug” in a sitting area or a decorative inlay on the face of an outdoor fireplace.
Tumbled pavers
Add a relaxed and informal appeal to your clients’ outdoor space using borders made with concrete pavers made to look like tumbled quarried stone; or, if your clients prefer the real thing, they can achieve the look using tumbled natural stone). These are typically lighter in color and while they can be used as field pavers, they are equally at home as decorative accents.
The weather-worn appearance can add a timeless Mediterranean look to a terraced outdoor space. Or, it can be used to create a beachy resort theme around a pool deck. It can also bring a more relaxed feel to a formal home. The tumbled texture pairs well with flagstone, bluestone, or sandstone field pavers (again, whether natural or manufactured). It also looks great next to brick or cobbles for a more dramatic border or accent with dynamic color contrast. Tumbled pavers can often be used on vertical applications as well, and many are available as wall units.
Choosing Colors
Most landscape architects will advise that you use no more than three colors in any given space, to prevent it from looking overly busy. That means a single field paver color (for example, limestone in a mid-tone neutral grey, along with a dual border of contrasting colors and textures, for example a row of burgundy bricks laid in a sailor bond and a single row of cobblestones. This border can be at the outer edges of the patio, or it can have an additional outer border of the same limestone used in the main field.
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