A method for efficiently representing realizations of computationally expensive random fields is proposed. The approach, known as emulation, consists of building a statistical approximation of realizations of such random fields. It is based on few runs of a code that performs the discretisation of the random field via the Karhunen-Loève expansion. This study is aimed at incorporating emulators to reduce the computational cost of stochastic finite element codes. Numerical results of emulating realizations of a Gaussian homogeneous two-dimensional random field are presented. It is shown that the proposed approach can reduce the simulation cost of random fields for stochastic finite element applications. © 2008 Civil-Comp Press.