Key:material

material=* – describes the main material of a physical feature.

It is most commonly used to describe the material of monuments, memorials, statues, walls, fences, but can be used for any other physical object except those listed below, which use other tags:

• Building façade → building:material=*
• Roof of a building → roof:material=*
• Insulation of power lines → insulation:material=*
• Main surface of roads → surface=* for values such as surface=asphalt or surface=mud
  • material=* can be still used as an extra detail – for example surface=unhewn_cobblestone material=granite is fine
  • surface=granite and similar should ideally be avoided.
  • For surface=paving_stones there is paving_stones:material=*, which can also be used.
  • Some mappers use surface:material=* instead.
• What is inside, for example in a storage tank → content=*.

Common values

Key	Value	Description	Photo
material	wood	Wood.
material	concrete	Concrete.
material	metal	Unspecified metal. It is better to use a more accurate value if you know what metal it is.
material	steel	Steel.
material	stone	Stone. Use a more precise value if you know which stone it is (see the following lines).
material	reinforced_concrete	Reinforced concrete.
material	plastic	Plastic.
material	brick	Brick.
material	bronze	Bronze.
material	granite	Granite.
material	brass	Brass.
material	glass	Glass.
material	sandstone	Sandstone.
material	rock	Rock. To avoid, prefer material=stone
material	aluminium	Aluminium.
material	copper	copper.
material	soil	Soil, earth. Often used in combination with man_made=embankment.
material	marble	Marble.
material	limestone	Limestone.
material	tufa	Tufa and/or travertine - a soft sedimentary rock formed by the chemical precipitation of calcium carbonate minerals from fresh water, typically in springs, rivers, and lakes, especially in karst around waterfalls
material	dry_stone	Dry stone, stones laid without any mortar to bind them together.
material	andesite	Andesite.
material	adobe	Adobe, mudbrick. Material made from earth and organic materials.
material	iron	Iron.
material	cast_iron	Cast_iron.
material	wrought_iron	Wrought_iron.
material	sheet_metal	Sheet_metal.
material	ceramic	Ceramic.
material	terracotta	Terracotta.
material	sand	Sand.
material	plaster	Plaster.
material	slate	Slate.
material	bamboo	Bamboo.
material	metal_grid	Metal grid (depending on the model also called wire mesh or wire grid, comparable is also perforated metal) is a specific type of material=metal. It is often used for seats and backrests of benches, sometimes also for outdoor tables.
material	basalt	Basalt.
material	weathering_steel	Weathering steel, sometimes called COR-TEN steel, are steel alloys that obtain a distinctive stable rust-like exterior when exposed to the weather. Typically used as building cladding and in abstract sculptures.
material	tyres	Tyres.
material	rammed_earth	Rammed earth.
material	trachyte	Trachyte.
material	greywacke	Greywacke.
material	fieldstone	Fieldstone.
material	muschelkalk	Muschelkalk.
material	palm_leaves	Arecaceae.
material	epoxy	Epoxy, a family of resins that may replace wood or concrete to mould or cast several industrial, urban, or domestic appliances
material	gabion	Gabion., is a cage, cylinder, or cube, typically mesh, filled with solid material.
material	masonry	Masonry is not a material. Please use other values.
material	user defined	All commonly used values according to Taginfo

This table is a wiki template with a default description in English. Editable here.

Using material tag for detailing surface info

surface=granite and similar should ideally be avoided as it fails to distinguish between surface=sett and surface=unhewn_cobblestone and surface=paving_stones

But, if someone wants to provide a detailed info for a surface, material=* can be used as an extra detail. This is friendly both for data consumers looking for extremely detailed info and for more general-purpose ones. For surface=paving_stones there is paving_stones:material=*, which can also be used.

surface=sett material=granite or surface=paving_stones paving_stones:material=granite are completely fine and much more useful tagging than surface=granite that loses useful info.

For example, the distinction between surface=unhewn_cobblestone and surface=paving_stones is very important for bicycle routing, while distinguishing between marble surface and granite surface and concrete surface is of lesser importance.

surface=metal material=steel is preferable over surface=steel as it allows more general-purpose data consumers to process data without failing as soon as someone will add even more detailed info about surface.