Good afternoon everyone

We are in the "thinking" stage re: our pool (I want one hubby is reluctant) but as I like to research everything to death, I am trying to come up with options for the stone surrounding the pool.

A little background - we live on St John in the US Virgin Islands and our pool will be tiny (if I convince hubby) The pool will not be directly next to our main outdoor deck which is Azek but we would walk behind the house (short walk) I am trying to limit the amount of different materials used - I don't want natural stone retaining walls, glass tile (I hope) around the waterline, Azek Decking on the main deck, terra cotta tile inside the house, concrete pad at the bottom of the stairs (as I said it is a small house) and yet another stone around the pool as I really want it to blend and not look disjointed.

Does anyone have a suggestion for a "natural" looking (colour) stone something that would blend with stone (rock) retaining walls - they are in the grey, brown, tan, blue tones (I enclosed a link at the bottom to see the colour)

A lot of people use Coral Stone but it suffers from mold and mildew here in the tropics and I refuse to be bleaching them as often as is necessary - it also needs to be cool under foot, non slip and not have a "texture" to the top of the stone where water could stand (after a rain) and therefore mold. Do you think we could use Azek Decking around the area that the loungers would be and right up to the pool edge therefore tying the deck and new pool area together and then just a coping? or should we try to tile the whole area up to the pool?

The reason I ask is that I will be Stateside in September and can look at samples as whatever we purchase will have to bought in by shipping container and there are no tile stores on island that carry samples.

Thanks again everyone - all of the pools here are fabulous - off to look some more :)

Piaa

Here is a link that might be useful: Pictures (from our building blog) of the retaining walls popular on St John