Driveway options in Ireland: which is right for you?

Whether you’re here to learn about laying a driveway in Ireland for the first time, you’re looking to renovate an existing driveway on your property, want cheap driveway options or the best driveway materials for Ireland’s climate, this guide will walk you through everything you need to know about the best driveway surface options available on the Irish market.

If you need any further assistance after reading this article, remember that the team at Tile Merchant is always available and happy to help.

What driveway surface options are available in Ireland?

You can lay driveways in Ireland with any one of these five base materials:

• Natural stone paving slabs (including limestone, sandstone, or granite paving slabs)
• Outdoor porcelain tiles
• Concrete
• Asphalt
• Gravel

Different driveway materials have different pros and cons, each suitable for a range of different design styles and budgets. However, certain materials tend to suit the unpredictable and often extreme Irish climate best.

In our guide to choosing the best driveway surface to meet your needs, we’ll be exploring each driveway option in detail to give you some ideas to get started with! Let’s crack on.

Why Choose Natural Stone Paving Slabs for Your Irish Driveway?

Natural stone refers to any rock formed over millions of years somewhere on Earth, but here at Tile Merchant we are quite particular about the natural stone we select for our paving slabs.

To be strong, resilient, and effective in a range of indoor and outdoor scenarios, our natural stone paving slabs are mostly made of the highest quality limestone and sandstone.

Recently, we added some beautiful, authentic Egyptian Limestone to our catalogue. You can read our guide on Egyptian Limestone to get more acquainted.

Natural stone paving slabs are a fantastic option for driveways in Ireland, as they have a natural riven texture that ensures grip for your tyres no matter the weather.

What’s more, the variety of options in terms of colour, size, pattern, and finish means that no two Irish driveways need look the same. Whatever your preferred aesthetic for your home and garden, there are natural stone driveway options to match.

Pros of Installing Natural Stone Paving Slabs

●  Wide variety of attractive styles, shapes, colours, and patterns of natural stone slab driveway options
●  Offer a natural aesthetic to the home
●  Significantly easier to clean and maintain than loose other surface options
●  Durability and frost resistance ensure natural stone slabs will retain their appearance over time
●  Well suited to Ireland’s climate

Cons

●  Natural stone paving slabs must be sealed post-installation and then resealed every few years to protect the slabs
●  Require drainage to be installed below, usually via a suitable substrate
●  Depending on the type of stone slab you opt for, this can be a slightly more expensive option than others

How to Maintain Your Natural Stone Paving Slabs

Natural stone paving slabs for driveways in Ireland can be cleaned with a power-washer and a pH-neutral soap, provided you take care not to damage the grouting.

For tougher stains and black spots, check out our range of patio and driveway cleaning products

Why Choose Outdoor Porcelain Tiles for Your Irish Driveway?

Porcelain isn’t the fragile material you may think it is. Our 20mm outdoor porcelain tiles have been rigorously tested to ensure their strength and durability, especially for use as driveways.

Porcelain tiles are also available through Tile Merchant Ireland in a remarkably diverse range of colours, finishes, shapes and sizes, allowing you to marry the inside of your house to the outside.

See, for example, the variety of colours available on our website. Our 20mm outdoor porcelain tiles range from dark to light, marble-effects to natural stone and wood.

We also see a huge demand specifically for grey outdoor porcelain tiles!

Pros of Installing Outdoor Porcelain Tiles

● Lots of different porcelain tile driveway options to choose from to suit any taste in terms of colour, style, shape, and pattern
● 20mm outdoor porcelain tiles are easy to install [learn how to install outdoor porcelain tiles]
● Porcelain tiles blend well with most outdoor patios and interior home aesthetics
● Porcelain is a naturally highly durable and scratch-resistant material
● Tile Merchant 20mm outdoor porcelain tiles are moss-, mould-, UV-, frost- and salt-resistant as well as being R11 anti-slip-rated, making them safe for all the family
● Porcelain tiles are the best driveway material for Irish weather
● Porcelain tiles don’t require sealing, unlike natural stone slabs

Cons of Installing Outdoor Porcelain Tiles

● One of the more expensive driveway material options on the market, starting from €39.99 per m².

How to maintain outdoor porcelain paving slabs

As with natural stone paving slabs, maintenance and cleaning are simple: a brush, hose, and occasional lather with a neutral-pH soap will keep your porcelain driveway looking lush for many years to come. And since they have built-in UV resistance, their colour will never fade.

Why Choose Concrete for Your Irish Driveway?

There’s a reason concrete is the go-to choice for 21st century construction projects: it’s one of the cheap driveway options, and is also remarkably strong and fairly easy to install.

For driveways, concrete may not be the most attractive option, but it is budget-friendly and will last you decades if properly looked after.

Pros of Using Concrete To Build A Driveway

●  Fairly cost-effective driveway surface option
●  Relatively easy to install
●  Lasts a long time (up to 30 years if properly installed and maintained), i.e., it is a low maintenance driveway
●  Gives your Irish home exterior a modernist, minimalist look

Cons of Using Concrete For A Driveway

●  Concrete driveways are susceptible to the cold, therefore they must be thoroughly de-iced in winter weather or they may crack
●  Concrete require 7 days to set post-installation
●  Few options for customisation of colour and pattern

How To Maintain A Concrete Driveway

Concrete is pretty easy to maintain. Our only serious note, to repeat the above, is to thoroughly de-ice your concrete driveway during winter to keep it from cracking. Otherwise, concrete driveways can be maintained with regular cleaning from a power hose.

Why Choose Asphalt for Your Irish Driveway?

Asphalt is a bituminous pitch mixed with sand or fine gravel, often used to lay school playgrounds, public roofs, and roads, and is one of the more common driveway materials options available.

As a driveway surface option, it is affordable, even easier to maintain than concrete, and built to be durable. The downside is that, like concrete, asphalt doesn’t carry much aesthetic appeal.

Pros of an Asphalt Driveway

●  Relatively easy to install
●  One of the cheapest options in Ireland
●  Highly weather-resistant
●  Takes very little time to set post-installation

Cons of Choosing Asphalt For A New Driveway

● Requires careful maintenance of the holes and cracks which will appear over time
● Lower longevity than concrete (lasts around 10 years if properly installed and maintained)
● Doesn’t have much of an aesthetic appeal.

How To Maintain An Asphalt Driveway

Asphalt can be fairly easily repaired by patching the holes and cracks which appear over time with more of the original material.

Why Choose Gravel (also known as Aggregate Stones or Decorative Stones) for Your Irish Driveway?

The cheapest of the cheapest driveway options in Ireland, gravel can cost very little to install indeed and, unlike concrete or asphalt, there is some wiggle room on the appearance front: you can choose between different shades or colours of gravel.

One of the major problems with gravel driveways in Ireland is that the rainy weather can cause slippage, and may lead to a worsening of potholes if they are left unfilled.

Maintenance of gravel driveways can also be a little tricky, despite the ease of installation

Pros of Using Gravel

●  Relatively easy-to-install driveway surface option
●  The cheapest driveway materials on this list
●  Can last a lifetime if properly maintained
●  Different colour options available

Cons of Installing A Gravel Driveway

●  Maintenance of gravel driveways can be tricky
●  Driving over gravel whips up dust and dirt, so cars will require more regular cleaning

How To Maintain A Gravel Driveway

Gravel gets distributed by the weight of cars driving over it, meaning you may have to regularly re-rake the gravel driveway to ensure its surface is spread easily. What’s more, if gravel are installed near your garden, then they will need deweeded regularly.

Over time, the top layer of gravel driveways must be entirely replaced (or topped up) to ensure potholes don’t form in well-worn areas.

How to combine a driveway with your existing patio

For those of us who want to build a driveway beside or leading to an existing patio, it’s important to know how you can blend the two together. 

Your best bet, in our opinion, is to opt for a natural stone slab or porcelain tile driveway option, as both of these materials can also be used as patio options, thus ensuring continuity in the look and feel of your home.

Driveway ideas: Extend your patio out to include a driveway

With paving options for your backyard being plentiful, and often crossing over into driveway surface options, you may find it handy to know that many Irish homeowners we’ve worked with choose to extend their patio into a driveway, or vice versa.

This “bringing the indoors outdoors” trend is on the rise, so if you’re looking for driveway ideas, look no further!

Driveway ideas: Separate your patio from the driveway

Alternatively, of course, you may prefer to create two distinct and separate areas: a driveway and a patio. To do so, you should think about what patio edging options will create a nice border, whilst marrying the two materials together.

You could opt for a slightly different shade of natural brick slab from those used for your patio and driveway, for example, or use porcelain tiles to edge your patio.

How to install driveways in Ireland

We’ve already written two comprehensive installation guides which we think will really help you when looking to install a natural stone driveway or install a porcelain tile driveway.

If you opt instead for concrete, asphalt, or gravel, then make sure you consider the following:

• Does the material require a drainage substrate foundation layer?
• Is the material durable enough to withstand Ireland’s weather?
• What’s my budget?
• Do I want to opt for durability (concrete), ease of maintenance (asphalt), or aesthetics (gravel)?

If you’ve got any questions about installing any of the driveway surface options listed above, remember that we’re always here and happy to assist!

A final thought on driveway options for the Irish market

Irish homeowners considering new driveway materials and alternatives to tarmac driveways in Ireland should give serious thought to the two most diverse, unique, durable and attractive driveway options on Ireland’s market today: natural stone paving slabs and 20mm outdoor porcelain tiles, both available in a wide range of styles, shapes, colours, price points and finishes from Tile Merchant.

If you’d like to see what any of our natural stone or porcelain driveway options or patio options might look like at home, don’t forget that you can order free cut samples of all of our tiles and slabs to try before you buy. 

We also have three gorgeous showrooms – two in Dublin and one in Ashbourne, Co. Meath – for you to pop-in in person, and we deliver to any postcode in the country for those who can’t make the trip to us.

Are you considering a new driveway? Contact Tile Merchant’s dedicated team today for some free, warm, expert advice.

Why Tile Merchant?

We offer extremely competitive pricing on our entire range of tiles and likewise. We stock a huge range of wall and floor tiles and our prices are competitive for retail and trade. Our stock is widely available in our tile stores in Dublin and Ashbourne (Co. Meath) which are open 7 days a week.

Alternatively, if you’d prefer to shop our tiles online, we can supply you with samples delivered for free.

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