Have you seen the Bianco Romano with your own eyes? Is it white with beige or is it mostly gray? What do the garnet spots look like? I looked and looked for great BR, and ended up giving up.....the ones I saw in Portland were super gray with large garnet spots that looked like melanoma moles. Our local granite folks told us BR had been "all quarried out" and wasn't as pretty as ten years ago. So, be sure you look at it firsthand. If you love it, great. Be sure to look at the Finished Kitchens blog and type in "white granite" and take a look at the other BR counters. Also, go take a look at firsthouse mp's postings of her white quartzite (White Princess? White Fantasy?) It's really gorgeous, and looks like marble.

I could be wrong, but based on what I've seen, a solid dark granite will be much more durable than quartz. I was able to scratch the heck out of engineered quartz (with a knife), nothing but a hammer had an effect on the granite. With the hammer, the quartz was demolished, the granite had a mark. I'm sure I could have broken it if I hit it a few more times. The thing is, there are many kinds of granite, and some of them are much more brittle than others. The ones that are durable seem almost indestructible. I'm not sure that has any connection to the price either. I bet you can find granite that is both cheaper and more durable than any quartz on the market.

OntarioMom: Thanks once again for the reply. My wife and I first went to Stone Innovations and talked to the nice lady at the counter, she was very helpful and eventually showed us the dozen slabs they had in the back but recommended other slab locations. She answered all our questions and invited us to have them give us an estimate when we found the granite/quartz we choose. We then drove to Granite Worx where we spoke to Rob and toured the dozens of slabs they had and again we were asked to allow them to be there fabricator by giving us an estimate. We were told that type of granite we looked at which had blotches were a grade four to five and would cost approximately $70-$80.00 per sq. ft installed. We didn't find anything we liked there so we went to our last slab place. One the way home we stopped off at MSI International and had to sign in and were led to the slab area. They don't fabricate but did mention it would take approximately 1/2 hr to tour the 4 rows of 3 cm granite rows. In a matter of 10 minutes were were ready to leave as there was nothing that caught our eye. There is no pricing on any slab, only grading which I'll assume the fabricator then prices out our requirements. Next week we'll try, HillTop,and Interstone.

The durability of quartz and granite can vary widely. How's that? Granite is plutonic rock formed over the course of millions of years under high heat and formidably high pressures. It's not going to dissolve in your kitchen. Engg. quartz is crystals/chunks of stone suspended in resin. Neither is going to decompose in a hurry. What are we doing in our kitchens to impact the longevity of either? Except, that is, changing our fashion aesthetic to change the counters out to a new colour/pattern/material? Monkeypuzzle, you are spinning needlessly on a futile if minor problem. If you are looking for a family of material to come down on the side of, you've got suggestions above: Do you want uniformity and regularity? Default to quartz although there are some subsets of granite that fit here, too, but still, default quartz. Do you want a non-sealing white (or light) counter? Default to quartz since most lighter natural stones will warrant sealing - which, it seems, is a scary step for you. Do you want movement / unique (although this is a loaded word) / drama or whatever? Default to natural stone. All that said, I will tell you that I wanted a no-movement, fairly uniform dark counter and I whittled my leading candidates down to: (a) a couple of granites, (b) a DuPont Zodiac engg. quartz, (c) and a Schist (which was a local MA stone), and (d) also a white marble (which fit none of my wants but it is so pretty!). I went with a granite. It is quiet but with its fluorescent cobalt blue inclusions, it gives me all the bling I may possibly want. Not always visible so in broad daylight, it just appears as a quiet black material with some clear quartz spots here and there. At night, with the halogens on, the cobalt blue inclusions pop up here and there depending on where one stands. And I love it. But the key is to identify what you need from your counter top. You are spinning like a top because you are wanting to conduct this futile academic exercise on what everyone else thinks is the best material. There is no such thing. You need to define what considerations matter to you, what you want, and then search to fit that bill because there is such a diversity of properties when it comes to natural materials that any universal law you pop up with, there will be a natural rock that contravenes that. That said, either quartz or granite will still be standing when any of us here are turning in our graves.