Welcome to Spooky Season!

September 22, 2026

By: Louie Sosa, PR.0/Marketing Account Director

With Halloween around the corner (or maybe already in your living rooms–no judgement, Frankie), we wanted to share our favorite Westlake Royal Stone Solutions stone veneer to represent our favorite fall-alternate aesthetics like goth, dark academia and horror, paired with damp-leaves-and-brisk-mist books because I read these and tracked on Goodreads and I love reading and it’s a fun way to make a blog 🐺📚🕯️

Medieval Maiming: Ash, Iron, and Sin

Cultured Stone’s Country Ledgestone in Gunnison is all about the goth vibes. It has a dark, monochromatic scheme of charcoal and gunmetal gray, with lighter gray accents that create a weathered look.
The skulls and candles of that photo shoot immediately made us think of the lord-of-grimdark Joe Abercrombie’s newest novel The Devils. Think suicide squad meets medieval times: a feme werewolf, baron vampire, invisible elf, and necromancer (among other unruly characters) are given a quest by the pope. It was so awesome that James Cameron already bought the movie rights, just sayin’.


Cultured Stone, Gunnison Country Ledgestone	The Devils, by Joe Abercrombie

Haint Horror: Pale Blue, Blood, and Porchlight

Haint Blue is a pale blue-green color traditionally used on porch ceilings in the South to ward off evil spirits, so when Westlake Royal Building Products released Haint Blue for its Reversible Beadboard, we immediately got supernatural-apparition vibes.
The book Red Rabbit by Alex Grecian is the perfect pairing. Are there spirits? Hell yeah. This folk horror epic is like Red Dead Redemption meets The Exorcist. Traveling from Texas through Oklahoma and Kansas, two vagabond cowboys and a recently widowed schoolteacher join a witch hunter to kill a witch for a bounty, or die trying.


Haint Blue prefinish option for Royal Beadboard Trim	Red Rabbit, by Alex Grecian

Hoa hoa hold my cider: Fog, Moss, and Amber

Creepy mist pouring through the trees and midday rain already has us reaching for a mug of cider. If that’s your vibe, we recommend try Rachel Gillig’s The Shepherd King duology. It’s giving Sleepy Hollow mixed with a tarot card magic system.
And with a Misty Valley Retreat featuring Cultured Stone’s Echo Ridge Old Country Fieldstone, it fits all too well.


Cultured Stone, Echo Ridge Old Country Fieldstone	The Shepherd King duology, by Rachael Gillig

Dark Academia: Russet, Ink, and Absinthe

The deckle edges and soft-touch finish of M.L. Rio’s Graveyard Shift pulled us in immediately, and we loved the mint green pop against the dark black. It’s about thrills, chills, rats, fungus and college-town mysteries before and after the bars shut down. Honestly, the banter was so good and we gobbled this book up.
Connecticut college-town architecture pointed us to Eldorado Stone’s TundraBrick in the Hartford colorway, and you can see why. Its classic, traditional red brick color is designed to look like it has weathered and aged over decades.


Eldorado Stone, Hartford TundraBrick	Graveyard Shift, by M.L. Rio

Cozy Hope: Honey, Cream, and Midnight

You might be thinking Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree, but we’re gonna go philosophical fiction with The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig. It’s a mashup of It’s A Wonderful Life and Bedazzled (starring Brendan Fraser…anyone?). Our main character finds herself on the brink of death, and the place between worlds so happens to be a library. It’s quite uplifting and optimistic.
Being thankful and reminiscing (plus a pop of orange) led us to this Thanksgiving-themed mood board of Cultured Stone’s Chardonnay Old Country Fieldstone, which offers a blend of warm beige and subtle cream tones. We think it’s missing whipped cream on that pie, but we’ll let it slide.