Cosentino Éclos® – A new range is launched!

Éclos® from Cosentino is the latest material to challenge quartz in our crowded marketplace, where the silica content of worktops is under scrutiny like never before. 

AG Stoneworks helps interior designers and architects to find the best products for their particular application. Given all the recent furore surrounding quartz worktops and their crystalline silica content, we are well placed to direct specifiers and consumers towards low silica products.

This journal focuses on Éclos, the exciting new product from Cosentino. Cosentino are probably the biggest hitter in our industry, and at the forefront of research and development. Cosentino’s market leader Silestone, through its Hybriq technology, already has reduced silica and clear marking of the crystalline silica content. You might ask, ‘Why a new product, when they already produce Silestone and Dekton, as well as quality natural stones?’

Éclos kind of fits between Dekton and Silestone. Like Silestone, it has a full-bodied appearance, but with greater heat resistance. It’s the resin content in quartz or engineered stones that lowers their heat resistance but Éclos, we are told, will take 220° C, making it a much more practical solution for the working kitchen.

Éclos is manufactured in a completely different way to traditional quartz. The slabs are manufactured using Cosentino’s Inlayr® technology. This builds up layer after layer of tattoo-like prints – to give that full-bodied look – and then a full, glorious, high-resolution print on the top surface.  The polymers used can handle higher temperatures than in quartz. All of this whilst having very low crystalline silica content!

The entire AG Stoneworks sales team headed down to Cosentino Hook last month for the Éclos launch. Our first reaction was that this is a good solid basic range, with something for everyone and very much on trend. The launch seemed surprisingly low key, compared to other events we have attended at Hook, but we enjoyed the Cosentino hospitality and felt that we came away with a good idea of what the new range is going to offer. 

Gallery of swatch-type images of the Éclos range

As ever with new ranges from Cosentino, Éclos doesn’t come cheap. R&D on the product itself is expensive, but that is nothing compared to the development of entirely new production lines. For the moment, expect to pay top dollar, but know you are getting a state-of-the-art product which is safer in fabrication and more practical in your kitchen!