Stone flooring experiences - good? bad?

[logosthecat]

I am having some building work done soon & new underfloor heating will eventually be put in in the kitchen and garden room.

The look is very modernist, so probably not going for the more 'rustic' look. Wanting a LIGHTish colour!

I'm wondering about some kind of brushed limestone, but this is largely because it's one of the few stones I actually know about Are there others I should think about?

Also, DH says that I will drop pots on it in the kitchen and it will break. (I am really clumsy). Is this true? I haven't managed to shatter the nasty, cheap ceramic tiles we have in the current kitchen sadly, but perhaps stone is easier to break?

Oh shoot, I just realised I left off some important stuff!

• the floor will be run from inside to out, so the stone needs to work in both sets of conditions.

• I WILL drop curry on it, so it if can stain, I will manage to stain it. So keen to avoid this!

I used to have a cream coloured rustic stone floor in the kitchen. I could not wait to get rid of it. Could not wait. Some of the reasons I hated it:

• it always looks dirty, shows up the tiniest bit of grime. OK if you're fine with mopping daily, I'm not.

• whilst the floor was flat, there were natural peaks and troughs in the stone surface. This means no matter how often you clean, you end up with small pools of dirty water here and there. This is solvable if you have polished flat stone.

• the uneven surface meant moping / cleaning took longer than my current flat surface floor.

• floor is cold. But if you have under floor heating you can discount this.

• I have never chipped the stone floor, but have scraped it when moving heavy furniture.

I've got limestone and love it. It's easy to hoover & mop and never looks dirty. Definitely need the UFH in winter though.
I've broken 1 glass in 2 years.
Ours came from Mandarin Stone, they've got masses of all sorts of stone.

fate - I hear you on the rustic surface. My current kitchen (which is a hellhole put in by previous house owners) has a FAKE cream rustic floor made out of cheap tiles, and it is so hard to keep clean. I hoover every day, mop several times a week, and I am pretty good at wiping up spills, and it still never looks good. I am definitely thinking of a smooth/brushed surface.

plusthree - I'm always breaking glasses, you're clearly less clumsy than me! I get around it by having cheap crockery from Ikea! But I'm worried about putting down a ££ floor and then smashing it. How sturdy would it be?

I have heard good things about Mandarin Stone - was thinking of using them as a supplier!