When choosing the benchtops for your kitchen, you should choose something that gives a unique feel and something that won’t fade or tarnish over time. It can be a hard decision to make, especially when considering practicality over cost, although, if you take your time and invest wisely you will find that there are some superb options that give you the best of both worlds;
Cheap and cheerful or, an investment?
The market is flooded with various benchtop products so you will need to narrow down your search, the first thing to do would be to set your budget and work from there. At the lower end of the market, you will find things like laminate coated wooden particle board and, at the top end of the you’ll find unique materials such as marble. Laminate coated benchtops tend to be the cheapest although there is a reason for that, they aren’t very durable and, if the laminate seals fail, which is quite often then moisture will get into the manufactured wood that forms the foundation of the benchtop.
Because laminate benchtops don’t use solid wood, moisture ingress means only one thing, blown and warped benchtops that will be hard to bring back to their original state, if at all and, will likely mean replacing the entire surface. Marble on the other hand is a solid, natural stone product of which there are several variants, it won’t tarnish over time and because it’s solid you won’t have any worries about any kind of water ingress which, is pretty inevitable in a kitchen environment. The trouble with marble is that, it’s really expensive in comparison to laminate products.
Finding a middle ground
There are several alternatives in between the top and the lower end of the market, although the best compromise tends to be quartz benchtops, they are a form of engineered stone, man-made, however, they are made from ground up particles of stone and then bound together using plastic resins. The result is such that you can achieve similar looks and characteristics that would do with something like marble but, it won’t cost you as much.
In some cases, you might find that you actually prefer the versatility of quartz benchtops because you can choose the finishing touches in terms of colour and pattern, some companies offer a massive range of options that can be tailored to your needs. You may have a particular look in mind that will complement the rest of your kitchen and, you probably won’t be able to find precisely what you are looking for, even if you spend a premium and go for the most expensive marble.
