Journal · Materials
How to choose a kitchen surface
A knife, boiling water, wine and grease — a worktop gets all of it every day. Four materials, and the weak spot of each.
In a kitchen the finish is a tool. A pan comes off the hob and goes straight onto the worktop. Bread gets cut without a board. Wine is spilled and wiped half an hour later. The splashback stands in steam and grease all day. So the choice doesn’t start with a photo in a catalogue — it starts with what you actually do in the kitchen every day.
Four materials and their limits
We keep all four in the showroom. We ask you to do one thing: lay them side by side under the light you will have at home and run a knife across each of them. After that the conversation about materials takes five minutes.
- 01 Porcelain Takes a pan straight off the hob, doesn’t absorb wine, cuts to any size. Its weak spot is the joints and the edge: sloppy work shows at once.
- 02 Quartz composite Warm to the touch, and scratches polish out. Heat is another matter: a pan from the hob leaves a mark, and the mark stays.
- 03 Natural stone No two slabs are the same — you pick the veining in person. Marble darkens from wine and oil; granite puts up with more.
- 04 Stainless steel This is how restaurant kitchens are built: steel is afraid of nothing. It does keep fingerprints, and within the first month it picks up a web of fine scratches.
Thickness and edge matter more than the material
The same slab at 6 mm and at 12 mm is two different things. The thin one reads as a sheet, the thick one as a piece of stone. Islands are usually done in 20 mm, with the edge built up to 40: an island should look heavy. On a wall it is the other way round — the thinner the slab, the bigger the sheet, the fewer the joints and the easier it is to work around sockets.
The argument about materials ends the second someone runs a knife across a sample. After that we only talk about thickness and edges.
The same thing as a table
| Material | Heat | Stains | Scratches |
|---|---|---|---|
| Porcelain | Heattakes it | Stainsnon-absorbent | Scratcheshighly resistant |
| Quartz | Heatnot heat-proof | Stainsnon-absorbent | Scratchesmedium |
| Marble | Heattakes it | Stainsabsorbs | Scratcheslow |
| Steel | Heattakes it | Stainsnon-absorbent | Scratcheslow |
What to choose
If you cook every day and there are children in the house, take porcelain. If you want a warm surface and don’t mind polishing it every couple of years, take quartz. Take marble with your eyes open: it ages beautifully, but wine marks will stay, and that is not a defect. Steel is for people who like restaurant kitchens and don’t count scratches as damage.
We have 40×40 cm samples to hand. Bring the floor plan and we’ll lay them out over your square metres and work out the cutting.
Try them with a knife yourself
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