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ggemdesignco · 7 years

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Marble vs Granite vs Soapstone vs Man Made for your kitchen counters- the actual answer!

I most often recommend and specify marble or other natural stone countertops. Stone (and by stone I mean granite, marble, and other materials like this from the Earth) is tried and true over THOUSANDS of years, it’s gorgeous and stable and we know a lot about how it’s going to behave and how it would fail or need to be repaired. Humans have been using stone in this way for so long, there’s very little that we don’t know. With newer composites we don’t know yet what they will do in 100 years. So I recommend marble, stone or NATURAL quartzite made by the Earth, not the composite materials also named quartzite, very confusing I know- we’ll get to those later. Because I’m from Boston, where homes from the 1600s still stand and the bulk of my life’s travel has been in Europe where structures for 1000s of years ago prove their worth, I believe in our natural materials and I further believe that you install it right once, and you never throw it away.

Gorgeous soapstone in a 1930′s lakefront kitchen in the mountains of Malibu. I learned from world famous interior designer Joan Behnke that on a project of hers in Sardinia, the carpenters allowed the fabricators to set the stone, and then build the cabinets underneath. The exact opposite as we do here in the USA, but it stands to reason, in a way. Stone is STONE! I love a good trend in kitchen layout as much as anyone, but seriously- if a room is in good shape and done with classic materials, there isn’t much of a need to go tearing it apart and throwing it away.

This kitchen floor and counters were in great shape- so we left them in place and nuanced the world around them to our client’s fabulous taste... You do need to be aware of things that can happen to your marble/stone and there are methods for correcting those (100s of years worth of methods, seriously) but marble is a classic kitchen counter material that has been doing the job for a long, long time and worthy of the investment.

Stone can stain, of course. Lighter marble can and will show stains if they set. Some measure of stain removal can be achieved by qualified marble care specialists. Wiping up stains when they occur is key and keeping the counter sealed (once a year, you apply it with a sponge yourself- just like wiping down the counter) will help.

All polished surfaces can be etched by acids such as citrus, a lemon face down on a counter will leave a lemon shaped dull spot spot. Polishing can repair this but a perfect mirror-like match will likely not be achieved.

Some marble is very heavily veined and fragile, these marbles are not appropriate for kitchens and any stone yard will alert you.

Some people picture themselves putting hot pans on a countertop. I don’t really understand it, but hey, it’s your house. I have never done this, and most of my clients do not have a habit of doing this, so NOT doing it is not an issue for them! If putting hot pans directly on your countertop is something you plan to do, talk to the stone yard about which materials this will work with.

You'll want to use a cutting board in any case. If you bake, you really should consider having a pastry marble area integrated to whatever you choose, all materials retain heat in a different way.

Cutting boards on top of cutting boards at cooking class in a Roman apartment.

Remember that your marble and stone needs to be quarried out of a mountain, then cut thoughtfully into slab, then loaded on a ship then brought to the stone yard, then selected, and loaded into a truck and brought to your site and installed. That’s where the cost is!

A white marble quarry we visited in Sardinia. It’s a lot of work to get stone out of a mountain.

If you are pricing a certain kind of stone and suddenly you get a much lower price from someone, you should be suspect. You don’t know what you don’t know yet, and there may be a reason why that’s likely quite obvious to professionals, usually it’s the grade of stone.

A yard full of slab remnants, we use these for bathroom counters, furniture, etc...

Be prepared that the handling, delivery and fabrication costs are meaningful, so the cost of your slab isn’t close to the final cost you’ll be paying the contractor- you are not being ripped off, it’s just that someone has to CUT SOLID STONE and make it look nice, and attach the edges to your exact measure and then pick it up with some sort of forklift and then load it onto a truck that can handle that weight and then bring it to your home where several strong people are needed to unload it and bring it in some opening that is big enough and then install it absolutely perfectly! And someone is needed to sequence and manage that whole process.

Also it’s a natural material, so colors and vein patterns vary from slab to slab. When we work with any marble, we go to the yard and select the cut of the slab, and the slab sequence- and we always approve the seam layout.

My artful client LOVED these particular portions of her soapstone, so we marked the slab to ensure the fabricator knew they were desirable to her.

Good shops who know how to work with hands on teams of designers and architects will send photos of their templates to the team before cutting....In this case we were vein-matching the counter and backsplash with this dramatic marble called Rainforest Green, and you can see both templates laid out here.

This is a seam diagram. See the long, uninterrupted center counter? Also know that the seams ended up almost invisible- where your seams will be depends a lot on slab size and condition. Our shop was very careful of somewhat vein matching the short counters. Fillers, a high iron content and other grade issues can seriously effect your outcome, so absolutely get an expirienced designer on board, or get yourself educated before buying slab from wherever without expert advice, an approach that may be penny wise and pound foolish. Finishes matter, sealers matter, there are levels of honing (the matte finish on stone), some finishes can be changed on site, some stones have PH neutrality, some stones etch easily and on and on and on. There’s a lot to know, so SOME expert advice will be needed for something at some point.

This gorgeous marble is leathered, it’s a finish that (aside from being very chic and addictively textural) can take a stone that would generally be too porous or fragile and make it kitchen worthy!

Marble block being cut into tile in the Umbria region of Italy- that equipment is HUGE! In the foreground you can see a block.

This fuzzy and dark photo shows what a stone fabrication shop looks like. This shop has some unique equipment and capabilities allowing them to offer expanded edge details and various other top tier products like HVAC grilles and much more.

Many natural quartzites are harder than marble- sometimes even harder than granite. They often have that marble look but in a natural, harder surface. Then, just to be confusing, there are other natural quartzites that are MORE brittle, so definitely talk to the stone yard about which one is which!

A very hearty and durable natural super light colored and dimensional quartzite in this giant chef’s kitchen- quartzite is surging in popularity because it can be cut in a economical manner now. It’s hardness used to make cutting and fabrication astronomical. But don’t buy it when people tell you all marble is too fragile or that it won’t wear well- this (below) is some PRETTY old marble and it’s holding up just fine 1900 years later at the Pantheon in Rome (built 113–125 AD).

There are many man made quartz composite materials like Ceasarstone, Titan, Silestone, Cambria, and Cosentino that people love and swear by, I have used some of them. I've found that etching can still occur but stains are basically nonexistent. What you trade is that gorgeous natural look and perfect irregularity that only the clever Earth can make! But there are so many examples of great looking quartz composite kitchens. See this one below from our artful consult client... Like it a lot in certain circumstances!

Hope this post helps a little in narrowing down the field of amazing counter top materials available, and gives you a little insight to what you’re paying for and why. There is so much to know about stone that sometimes even we engage a reputable stone broker to ensure we have the most up to date info. If you know you simply don’t have the bandwidth to get caught up on all the nuances of stone, marble, granite countertop materials, their fabrication and installation- contact a professional designer.

Oh and in case you didn’t get it, my definitive professional design advice is:

natural stone

take away list

Use natural stone

Put it over only quality cabinets- please don't tear stone from the Earth without darn good reason. If you are thinking of cheap cabinets and stone, please reconsider.

Do not throw away stone if you can possibly keep it

Use a professional, preferably a TEAM of professionals for work of this caliber

This is a huge category- Engage an expert.

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