Unlike the more familiar solitary standing stone, a stone pair, as the name suggests, consists of two upright megaliths set deliberately in relation to one another, aligned along a specific axis. The pair at Ballinvarrig, tucked into vegetation on the eastern bank of the Blarney river in County Cork, follows that pattern precisely: its two stones are oriented along a northeast to southwest axis, with just 0.8 metres of ground between them.

The stones are not evenly matched. The northeastern stone rises to 1.7 metres in height, while its southwestern companion reaches only 0.95 metres, giving the pair a noticeably unequal profile. Both are roughly similar in length and thickness, each around 0.5 metres long and 0.4 to 0.45 metres thick, and the overall span from one to the other is 1.9 metres. This graded height difference, taller stone to the northeast and shorter to the southwest, is a pattern observed across many Cork stone pairs and has led researchers to speculate about deliberate astronomical or ritual intent, though no consensus has been reached. The site is catalogued in Seán Ó Nualláin's 1988 survey of stone pairs in the region, which documented numerous comparable examples across the county and helped establish stone pairs as a recognisable monument type in their own right.