Has anyone used pavers or put stone down in their back garden/yard?

[middler]

We are going to take up the old cracked concrete from the 60s in our back garden and think we will put pavers down but are also considering stone/porcelain. Can't decide on colour, grey or beige at the moment.

It's 70 square meters of space. Is it worth the double the cost price of stone compared to pavers? The cost of demo and then pavers is quite high so not sure we can stretch to higher end material. Just wondered if anyone can share anything that worked or did not work in their back garden doing this kind of project?

We have honed stone (limestone) and I love it. It’s quite a small area so the cost difference wasn’t too huge, actually it was less than the porcelain options we looked at. It’s really nice to walk on in summer and it has a golden glow to it.

It is a bit higher maintenance than porcelain as it is porous so can develop green patches and stain if you drop eg oily food on it or rust from metal furniture. It needed to be sealed - best if this is done before laying by the company that sells it. We will probably need it re sealing soon.

We spray it a couple of times a year with a stone friendly mould/algae killer and jetwash it once or twice too. Porcelain would still need cleaning of course but wouldn’t be absorbent. Concrete pavers would still be porous though but perhaps not as much.