Cleaning cobblestones from sand

To meet your requirements for "cleanliness," better "uniformity," you need a specialized cleaning company that subsequently seals the pavement. Then every 3-4 years. I find the condition completely acceptable in terms of what is to be expected.

.. that looks away - over the years ;)

.. it fades away - over the years ;)

My wife says the same about my weight gain over the past 30+ years...

The following sentence is not meant to be mean: But have you looked at my pictures?? That's really a difference like day and night. We paved 200 sqm, which was accordingly expensive, and now the stones really look like they were freshly blasted from the mountain. That really annoys me a lot in the early days after the new build. And yes, it sounds snobbish when I say that this stone was laid everywhere in our neighborhood and it looks there exactly as it should. If the stone looks like that after 5 years, well, so be it. But ours never looked new and somewhat clean (except when it was delivered and lying on the pallets). I could have gotten it much cheaper somewhere else and newly laid it at our place.

See! I'm not fat either - just bloated ...

.. do you have the same supplier as the neighborhood? Apart from the appearance - do the stones differ in quality? Are they rougher? Do the cut edges look different?