Young Blonde Girl On The Sedimentary Rocks

- "Clean" sandstones with open pore space (that may later be filled with cement) are called arenites
- Muddy sandstones with abundant (>10%) muddy matrix are called wackes.
Six sandstone names are possible using descriptors for grain composition (quartz-, feldspathic-, and lithic-) and amount of matrix (wacke or arenite). For example, a quartz arenite would be composed of mostly (>90%) quartz grains and have little/no clayey matrix between the grains, a lithic wacke would have abundant lithic grains (<90% quartz, remainder would have more lithics than feldspar) and abundant muddy matrix, etc.
Although the Dott classification scheme is widely used by sedimentologists, common names like greywacke, arkose, and quartz sandstone are still widely used by nonspecialists and in popular literature.