Granite is usually a white, black or buff color. It has a medium to coarse grain. Outcrops of granite tend to form rounded boulders cropping out of flat, sandy soils. Granites sometimes occur in circular depressions surrounded by a range of hills, formed by the metamorphic aureole or hornfels. Granite is nearly always massive, hard and tough, and it is for this reason it has gained widespread use as a construction stone. The word granite comes from the Latin granum, a grain, in reference to the coarse-grained structure of such a crystalline rock.

Granite is currently known only on Earth where it forms a major part of continental crust. Granite occurs as relatively small, stock-like masses and is often associated with orogenic mountain ranges. Small dikes of granitic composition called aplites are associated with granite margins. In some locations very coarse-grained pegmatite masses occur with granite.

Granite has been intruded into the crust of the Earth during all geologic periods; much of it is of Precambrian age. Granite is widely distributed throughout the continental crust of the Earth and is the most abundant basement rock that underlies the relatively thin sedimentary veneer of the continents.

Granite is an igneous rock and is formed from magma. Despite being fairly common throughout the world, the areas with the most commercial granite quarries are located in the Scandinavian Peninsula (mostly in Finland and Norway), Spain ( mostly in the Galicia area), Brazil, India and several countries in the South end of the African continent, namely Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa.