A Rapid Guide to Stone Worktop Materials – PART 2
Stone and stone-type materials can be confusing, even for people who are involved in building, kitchen design or architectural industries. In our last piece in this two-part series we took a look at different kinds of natural stones which are used for kitchen worktops. This time it is on to the artificial, reconstituted, factory-produced or human-made versions…
PART 2 – Reconstituted Stones
So, if a “stone” isn’t natural, what is it?
Many of today’s most popular materials for kitchen worktops are actually produced in factories, not naturally at all. Although many manufacturers claim to have unique processes (which are top secret, of course) and like to avoid their products being lumped into the same categories as any one else’s, we can actually simplify down to two groups.
1) Materials held together by plastic/polymer resin – “Quartz”
Over the last 30 years or so, engineered stone or quartz worktops have taken the market by storm. Made of a mixture of around 93% mineral material, sometimes with glass or metallic elements included and around 7% plastic resin, these materials are hard wearing, very strong, non-porous, hygienic and can be made in a huge variety of looks.
The name “quartz” is as confusing as anything in our market. For a geologist, it refers to a mineral in a crystal form – Silicon Dioxide, or silica. “Quartz” worktops may contain large quantities of this mineral… or they may not. But the name has stuck as a way of referring to slab materials held together by polymer.
Calacatta Gold quartz worktops in a Surrey kitchen
In recent years safety concerns regarding crystalline silica have come to the fore. When materials with a high proportion of quartz are cut or ground, the air-borne powder that can result is dangerous to health. This is no issue once installed in your home, but there is real risk in the workshop. We take actions to nullify the danger, and quartz manufacturers are now reducing the crystalline silica content in their products. The very name “quartz” is getting less and less appropriate, if it ever was. All the same, I suspect it will stick.
These engineered stones should not be confused with Corian and other mouldable mixtures of plastic resin and minerals. Quartz slabs can’t be moulded – they handle and machine very much like real stone. Mouldable products have 30% or more resin content, are fabricated quite differently as worktops and have a different set of pros and cons in use.
The big brands in the engineered stone market are fairly well known: Caesarstone, Silestone, Cambria, Radianz and many more.
2) Materials held together by heat and pressure
More recently, a new generation of factory-produced worktop materials has come to market. These are held together not by plastic but by a mixture of heat and pressure. There are many brand names, many descriptions and probably a variety of technologies involved – exact processes are closely guarded secrets. But they can be grouped together under the term ceramic. They are non-porous, very hard, very resistant to scratching and staining and reasonably strong. Where there is a weakness it can be in brittleness – exactly the trade-off of hardness versus breakability that you might inspect from what is in effect a massive china plate.
A Sussex kitchen topped with Dekton Trillium
Descriptions you may hear in this sector are ceramic, porcelain, and “sintered particle technology.” Brand names include Sapienstone, Laminam, Dekton, Uniceramica, Neolith and many more.
Ceramics are generally not full-bodied (i.e. they don’t have their pattern running right through the stone) – they can be superb imitations of real marbles, for instance, because a photograph of the real thing is simply printed on! But it’s generally surface only, though all the manufacturers are working hard to achieve a truly full-bodied ceramic worktop.
