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vanity top corian, granite, marble-pros-cons

15 years ago

Please tell me what you like or dislike about your bathroom vanity top-corian, granite or marble or other. I must make a decision very soon.

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Comments (2)

suero
15 years ago
I like my corian top because it can have a cove backsplash. That means no crevice to catch yucky stuff.
jakkom
15 years ago
Granite and marble wonderful, but you would be doing a drop-in sink. Not as easy to clean as the integral sinks. Marble can be damaged or stained by many common products, including some toothpastes. But both are an elegant and timeless look in a traditional-styled bathroom.

Corian - Swanstone is my preferred alternative (I have a bathroom integral sink vanity and Swanstone counters in our kitchen) - is matte finish and as stated above, you can do integral sinks with coved backsplashes. Very easy to clean and maintain. Avonite, Silestone, etc., all fall into this category. One advantage Swanstone has over most of its competitors is that it will do integral sinks in ANY color it offers, instead of just the 3 or 4 standard colors.

Cultured granite is a cheaper alternative available from cultured marble vendors, aimed at competing with the solid surface mfgs. Local vendors will offer different color mixes from one another. Cultured marble is usually considered very downscale in most markets. Cultured granite is slightly glossier than Corian/Swanstone - we used it in our master bath. We wanted a solid showerpan, 42" neoangle, which we could only get from a local CM vendor. The slab shower surround walls and double-sink vanity all match the showerpan, in a tan cultured granite. Most people think it's Corian. Being non-porous, it's just as easy to keep clean and impervious to almost all household chemicals. Just keep abrasives away from it - they're not needed, anyway.

I will say that Swanstone is the most heat-resistant. My mother left a burning cigarette on the Swanstone top. What would have irreparably damaged the cultured marble (the clear gel topcoat is more fragile than the resin mixes used by Swanstone and DuPont Corp et.al.) was scrubbed off the Swanstone with a green scrubbie, with no damage to the vanitytop itself. With the beige granite pattern, the very faint yellowish mark is virtually invisible. If I didn't know exactly where it happened, I wouldn't be able to locate it.

Only you can decide how much wear-and-tear you put on your bathroom counter, and what your budget is. There are so many ways to cut costs - sale close-outs, etc. - that the cost for anything in a standard size is not going to vary much from one product to another.
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