When you want to enhance your kitchen with a new countertop, knowing where to start isn’t always easy. Before going all-in on the countertop of your dreams, it’s usually best to figure out the right countertop material for your needs. Since countertops set the tone for the kitchen, choose materials that express your style while also supporting your preferences for practical use. With such a wide variety of different design possibilities, you get to choose if you want to use minimalistic materials to emphasize the essentials of your countertop, or if you’d rather one to match a new or preexisting bold color scheme in the kitchen.
While only you know best about what works for your countertop needs, Schuler Kitchens & Baths is always available to help discuss your design ideas. We wrote the overview below of some great materials to help you discover your perfect kitchen countertop.
Granite
Granite used to be the countertop material of high-class elites, but today it is uncontested as the most popular natural-stone countertop choice. Counters made from Granite are commonplace at many home-improvement stores and remodeling businesses with kitchen showrooms.
Granite comes in many different colors, from dark earth tones and bright whites to vivid reds and deep blues. After raw granite is cut, formed, and polished, it’s given a strong sealer to ensure the countertop resists stains.
While granite countertops are beautiful and long-lasting, a given slab that becomes countertop material may bring imperfections with it that can’t easily be altered. Granite is also a more expensive material, and it has the potential to crack if it isn’t installed correctly.
Slate And Soapstone
Slate and soapstone offer a lot of benefits to countertop design, but they don’t typically come in more than three or four colors. Soapstone is often a dark black, grey, and green material, usually mixing those colors for various natural blends. Slate is an exceptionally dense material that almost always comes in a few distinct colors, usually gray, black, brown, green, and red.
Soapstone is uniquely porous and must be treated with mineral oil to mitigate staining. Slate isn’t porous at all and needs almost no upkeep of any kind. While slate is somewhat soft, small scratches can be easily buffed out with a patch of steel wool. Slate typically has a muted matte appearance, but you can give it a “wet” sheen by lightly rubbing the countertop with lemon oil.
Marble
Marble is one of the most traditional materials for high-class kitchen countertops. It comes in a wide range of exciting textures and hues, like beige, pearl white, dark black, and soot gray. While marble can cost quite a bit, there are different price ranges for distinct types, like the more budget-friendly Carrara marble. Not only does Carrara look very similar to more traditional marble, but its large selection of colors and textures can hide chips and stains that are typical of the softer, traditional marble.
For a long lifespan, it is crucial to maintain marble and other natural-stone countertops with liquid detergent and water.If your countertop will be used multiple times a day and be the center of a lot of foot traffic, then a marble countertop may not be the best choice. On the other hand, marble surfaces have been shown to provide value to bakers who like having a cold surface to roll dough out on.
Wood
Countertops made of wood are a great choice in the kitchen and elsewhere due to their hygienic nature and pleasing texture. At the University of Wisconsin’s Food Research Institute, microbiologists discovered that wooden cutting boards kill food-poisoning bacteria that survive easily on plastic boards, making them ultimately safer in the long-term.
Wood countertops are often made with maple, which is a very dense hardwood, but other woods are also common, including walnut, cherry, birch, and oak. While wooden countertops can be beautiful and relaxing to the touch, they do require ongoing care to prevent scarring and friction-based wear. It’s probably best for owners to regularly oil and seal their wooden counters and void scratching the surface with knives and other kitchen tools.
If you’re in the market for a new kitchen countertop or just want to better understand the benefits of the wide variety of different materials, Schuler Service is committed to helping you. Once you contact Schuler Service, our expert remodeling specialists will help you figure out the best countertop material and design for your kitchen and lifestyle. Feel free to visit us today and see our showroom that features some of our great work!
