Skip white. You’re looking for beige to browns. Dust is mostly dead skin cells. Crumbs are mostly bread related. All beige to brown.

I picked cappucino quartz for that very reason and I am satisfied with my choice. It doesn't look as stunning as marble effect quartz. The marble effect quartz we liked were too white and we were afraid of it showing stains easily.

Quartz getting scratched by keys in a purse seems very unlikely. Marble effect quartz should work well as long as it is not too white.

I would get granite in the Alaska White family. Answers all your checkboxes. To your husband's point, it is not high maintenance - you seal once a year which takes 5 minutes, and cleaning is with a bit of dish soap and wipe dry. However, the slabs vary a great deal, so you may have to go to a few stoneyards to find the one that you like.

We went with a solid white quartz countertop and have two young children. Yes it shows everything and I mean everything. However, they clean up amazing!! We are by no means easy on them. My kids have gotten markers and paint on them, I have spilled wine, and we have set everything on them. I have 0 stains on them after almost a year. We use a soft scrub with bleach and everything has wiped away so far.

I find that busy granite hides even crumbs unless you look closely!! Dust too.

thx everyone! I want suttle so I guess I'll be cleaning more :) hubbie won't be happy once again. more "maintenance." :)

My experience is that lighter solid colors hide dirt more than dark. Dark seems to show every speck of dust. Go with what you love and clean it accordingly :)

River White Granite. (aka Kashmir white)

Ours is called ocean foam. It shows stuff but I just wipe it up. We have three kids.

@Anglophilia That's what I want for mine. My kids and husband can't give me a blank look and say "Oh, I didn't know it was there" when I point out the crumbs or spills etc. The laminate in the pantry (aside from my own misgivings of it and the paint color not meshing) is irritating the dickens out of me-every time I go out there, I see a spill or crumbs that are "invisible" to everyone else. Argh.

Kashmir White is one of the worst possible countertop choices. It stains when you look at it.

The sample is what this top looked like when it was new.

Gross.

well, I'd say they didn't seal that stone, Jospeh. And if they say they did, that's bull. Either that or they were extremely messy slobs who looked like they were mixing tomato sauce and wine on the counter surface, refused to wipe clean, and never applied a sealer. then maybe you'd get something that bad. You're showing one example w/no background on the stone, what was used, what wasn't used, how long it sat, etc.

She wanted a white stone. Any white stone (natural) is going to have a higher propensity of staining. That's just the way it is. Is river white as bad as marble? no. not at all. is it as good as Absolute or the darker granites? no. not at all. Pick your poison. A white natural countertop, or something darker and impervious to staining.

As for quartz, not all of them stain. It's simple. just clean up after you cook or prepare. the sealers buy you time. maybe not a week, but they'll buy you a day. if you can't clean up messes within a day, then get a laminate countertop.

I had done some reading on court staining a few months ago and some people had either rubbed against the courts with some metal that they had on their shirt or left something metal on it or permanent marker from the kids. I had learned that not all courts is made the same. Fabricators I went to yesterday denied and said all quartz is made the same and agreed that it can stain if you don't wipe it up sooner than later. I'm glad I'm getting butcher block for the island! It will be cheap to change out and I'm expecting it to change with the years. I think I would be more bothered if I got permanent stains on the white then I would with the marble effect quartz. With the white my thought is it would stand out more

Corian doesn't stain and comes in several solid whites.

Joseph, Corian is more pricey than quartz, now , I've heard? I want to say my friend has Corian and it has a lot of cut marks on it. Is it more of a plastic material? or is it a kind of quartz? thx!

We have Corian ... it's around forty years old and looks pretty much the same as ever. It's not plasticky, but it certainly doesn't feel like the granite on our island either. It's a nice, smooth, non-porous surface and super easy to clean. We even had accidental sharpie bleed through, and it came off with SoftScrub; you'd never know it ever happened. There might be a few marks where the point of a knife hit, but I couldn't tell you were those are. You shouldn't cut on your countertop, anyways; it's terrible for your knives, but yes, there's always a chance the knife runs off the edge of the cutting board or something, so it is something to consider. Corian can be sanded or micro sanded to remove cut marks if they're not too deep; we've never had to.

Our Corian is white with cream marbling (no names back then ... you just picked white, cream, or white/cream marbled), and it doesn't show dust; it will show crumbs and such. The polished black granite island shows everything, especially fingerprints. I don't mind seeing dust and crumbs, since we'd rather know they're there to be cleaned up, but the fingerprints are annoying. We have the same Corian in one bathroom (counter and sink) that looks great and cleans great there, too. The other bathroom has white Corian, it has a dent from where something fell, but other than that no issues with it either. I'd get Corian again.

My sister's granite counters are classic cream and brown speckle, and they always look great despite toddlers and cats and whatever they knock over. They have to be cleaned constantly (toddlers, cats ...), but a quick wipedown is all it takes. If you get on just the right angle you might find some toddler prints, but the pattern seems to hide them.

This is like when people say that stained cabinets get less dirty than white cabinets!

No, they both get just as dirty, but you see it much more quickly/easily on the white cabinets.

I had dark counters that hid food/spills very easily and now I have light counters that show the dirt. Do you think it made a difference to the other members of my family? NO, they still ignore the dirt/spill and go on their merry way.

Ssssh, lately I've been ignoring all the crumbs they make to see if anyone else notices and actually cleans them up ... I think we are on day 4 and no change to their behavior!!!

Personally I prefer the lighter surfaces so I can see the mess others have left and don't end up putting my hand down on a bunch of crumbs or melted ice cream.

I'm sure I'll definitely be cleaning more instead of waiting for the kids to do their chores or waiting until late at night for husband to help with the dishes. That's always been frustrating as it is

"Joseph, Corian is more pricey than quartz, now , I've heard?"

It is competitively priced with engineered stone.

" I want to say my friend has Corian and it has a lot of cut marks on it. Is it more of a plastic material? or is it a kind of quartz?"

Corian can suffer cut marks, but those marks are easily removed. Estone can have cut marks, they are more difficult to make, but much more difficult and expensive to remove. Tradeoffs.

The stoner purists that gush about "natural" stone forget that most wouldn't exist as countertop material without resinating (plastic) at the processing plants. The substantial difference between Corian and estone is the filler, not the "plastic" or amount thereof. Aluminum try hydrate and plastic = Corian. Quartz and plastic = engineered stone.

I TOTALLY get what you are saying! I recently started my search for new countertops with the exact same thoughts. I had a dark granite. Moved to our new house with white Corian and it drove me crazy that every drip and spill showed. Then moved back to the first house we still owned and enjoyed the dark granite again. But now with a new home we want something less dated. I am once again tempted by the white quartz. I saw your post and wondered what you ended up choosing...?

do you know the name of the dark quartz you liked?

Do you know the name of the dark quartz you liked?