Choosing stone
Choose a countertop by how you use the kitchen.
People come to Airport Road asking which countertop is best. It is the right instinct and the wrong question. We have never once been able to answer it cold. Every material in the yard is the best one for somebody. What we can do in about ten minutes is work out which two are right for you. The way there is to ask about the room rather than about the stone.
Here are the five questions, in the order they actually eliminate things.
1. Does direct sun land on the counter?
This one is first because it has a hard answer. It is also the one people discover too late.
Engineered quartz is ground quartz held together with polymer resin. Resin reacts to ultraviolet light. Manufacturers know it and write it into their warranties: Cambria's excludes product installed outdoors, in partially covered or sheltered outdoor areas, in entryways, and in interior areas that take traffic from outdoors. Read the warranty for whichever brand you are quoted, because the exclusion reaches further than an outdoor kitchen. A sunroom, a bar top inside south-facing glass, or a run beside a door that stands open all summer can all discolor. The discoloration is permanent because the resin itself has changed.
Everything quarried is unaffected by sunlight. Granite, quartzite and marble have been outside for most of their existence. Porcelain is fired at very high temperature and is also fine in daylight.
If sun lands on the counter, engineered quartz comes off the list. That is usually the fastest cut we make.
2. Does anything acidic get set down on it?
Lemon, vinegar, wine, tomato, a few cleaners. Not spilled and wiped, but left there for a minute while you do something else.
The Natural Stone Institute splits stone into two families for exactly this reason. Calcareous stones are calcium carbonate, which reacts with acid: marble, travertine, limestone and onyx. Siliceous stones are built on silica and are generally resistant to the acids found in a kitchen: granite, quartzite and sandstone. What happens to a calcareous stone is called etching. It is not a stain sitting on the surface. It is a dull spot where the polish has been chemically removed. No amount of cleaning brings it back.
We have written at length about marble in a working kitchen. The summary is that marble will etch, that a honed finish hides it far better than a polish does, and that plenty of people decide they like the result. It is a preference rather than a defect. But it has to be decided in advance instead of discovered in month two.
If nobody in the house is going to think twice about a lemon, either marble comes off the list or the finish changes.
3. Do hot pans come straight off the stove onto the counter?
Be honest here rather than aspirational. Almost everyone says they use a trivet and roughly half of them do.
Quarried stone does not scorch. Porcelain does not scorch. Engineered quartz can, because the resin is the weak link even though the quartz in it is hard. Every manufacturer tells you to use a trivet. They mean it.
If the answer here is yes and the answer to question 1 was no, engineered quartz is still possible. You are accepting a rule the whole household has to follow, so say that out loud before you buy it.
4. Do you want the counter to look the same in ten years?
This question sorts people more than any other. There is no wrong answer to it.
Engineered quartz is built to look like the sample and stay that way. That is the entire point of manufacturing it. Granite and porcelain both age quietly. Quartzite is hard and stable. Marble and soapstone develop a patina, which is a polite word for a surface that records what has happened on it.
Some people find that unbearable and some are buying it on purpose. The mistake is buying a stone that changes while quietly expecting one that does not.
5. How much counter is there, and does all of it have to match?
A galley kitchen might take one slab. A kitchen with a large island and a full run of perimeter can take three or four. That changes what is realistic.
Engineered quartz is a product with a part number. Order six slabs and you get six matching slabs. Natural stone is not a specification, it is an object. Two slabs correctly sold under the same variety name can look meaningfully different because they came out of different blocks. That is either the best thing about it or a real problem, depending on how big the kitchen is and how much of it you want to read as one surface.
The practical version of this question is whether enough consecutive slabs are left in the bundle for your job. That is a yard question. The time to ask it is before anybody cuts.
What each one is actually good at
With those five answered, here is the short version of each material and where to read more.
- Granite. Quarried, siliceous, shrugs off acid and heat, unaffected by sun, and the most forgiving thing we sell for a kitchen that gets used hard. Usually wants sealing. The widest range of pattern of anything in the yard.
- Engineered quartz. Non-porous, no sealing, completely predictable, and excellent in a bathroom, a laundry, a rental, or anywhere that has to match something else. Keep it out of sun and use a trivet. The one-letter difference between this and quartzite is worth ten minutes of reading.
- Quartzite. A rock made almost entirely of quartz, about 7 on the Mohs scale, hard enough to scratch glass. Handles sun, heat and acid. Usually wants sealing. How often depends on how compressed the particular stone was when it formed. Read this before buying one, because some slabs sold as quartzite are dolomitic marble and behave nothing like it.
- Marble. The most beautiful thing in the yard and the only one that will visibly change. Honed rather than polished for a working kitchen. Right for the person who wants it to look lived in.
- Porcelain. A fired sheet rather than a quarried stone, extremely dense, indifferent to heat, acid and sun, and available in very large formats with very few seams. Where it beats stone and where it does not comes down to the edge and to the fabricator, which is why it has a piece of its own.
Two things to ignore while you decide
Ignore the phrase "maintenance free". Sealing a natural stone does not make it stainproof. The products are impregnators and they work as a repellent, so they make a stone more stain resistant and buy you time to wipe something up. The Natural Stone Institute says exactly that. Meanwhile the non-porous materials still want a neutral cleaner rather than a scouring cream. Every countertop has a care routine and all of them are short.
Ignore the idea that the material sets the budget. This is the one that surprises people. Granite runs from very ordinary to extraordinary, quartzite does the same. The two ranges overlap heavily. What moves a countertop quote is square footage, thickness, the edge profile, the number of cutouts, and which specific block a slab came out of. A common granite and a rare one are not the same purchase even though the word on the tag is identical. The only honest answer to "is quartzite more expensive than granite" is that it depends on which quartzite and which granite, which is why we quote the slab rather than the category.
The part that does not happen on a screen
Every one of the five questions above can be answered at your kitchen table. The last step cannot.
We are an importer, so the slabs here are the actual slabs rather than samples of them. A four inch chip tells you the color and nothing about the movement, the veining across a six foot run, or where the interesting part of the stone lands once it is cut for your island. We put slabs outside in daylight for that reason, because showroom lighting is built to flatter and your kitchen is not lit that way.
Bring the five answers and, if you have them, the cabinet door and the floor sample. Come to Airport Road, or tell us about the project and we will tell you which two materials are worth your time before you drive anywhere.