I'm planning on Corian for a bathroom. For the kitchen, what I really want is recycled glass, but I live in such a backwater that there is probably no fabricator for it.

Missing Anglophilia who would be lobbying hard for her glacier white corian :)

Anglo would say Glacier White Corian is a classic, like the perfect white shirt and wears like iron. I agree. Do look at current applications of Corian.

recycled glass

Beat me to the punch!

Definitely in the running here, at least for a bathroom or two if the designer agrees.

We've used granite, quartz and laminate. So those are out. Don't like repeating myself!

I have no idea what it means to read quartzite a bedtime story, but I have quartzite and I love it! Mine is totally bulletproof and I love the look.

Oh, and I agree about the quartz patterns, but maybe also consider solid white quartz. I have MSI Arctic White in my bathrooms and it’s a good neutral. Would look good with the green Bodbyn cabinets.

"...but their Designer White stained when tested with the berries I eat daily for breakfast..."

It depends on what you mean by "stained". Corian doesn't stain in the I-can't-get-it-out sense of the word. You may poultice granite and quartzite to remove a stain; you'll never need to poultice Corian.

We're considering Taj Mahal Quartzite. It's real quartzite not marble or dolimite. It's also the hardest of the qartzites. I love some of the marble slabs we've seen but don't think I want to go there.

if the designer agrees

Now, that's a whole 'nother problem here. There are only two firms in my area with kitchen designers, and only one firm where the designers are certified. The portfolios of both companies are much of a muchness -- all the designs for all their clients look the same to me. I can't determine whether that's because all the clients want the same things (very possible here) or because the designers do exactly the same thing no matter what.

I think we've decided to do granite instead. It's coming out alot less that engineered quartz & Taj quartzite. The stone place we went to yesterday is recommending dark perimeter tops on the off white cabinets & something with more movement/lighter on the darker cabinets of 10 ft isand. We took our cabinet doors with us for matching. May still do Taj Mahal on the island.

Please, only 1 countertop choice, especially since you have 2 different colored cabinets. Many times, less is more.

OP here.

After round 3 of stone yards and big box visits, husband is leaning toward a porcelain slab and I’m thinking white Corian. The porcelain slab is hands-down prettier. It’s glossy and awesome...but with no real track record and the fabricator is being all hemmy-and-hawwy about pricing for it.

Price isn’t the main consideration here, but the Corian seems like half the cost and a quarter the trouble? Is it the Honda of countertops, like not-impressive-but-respectable? (I am a ponytail and Honda sort of person; my husband is a Mercedes and dress shirt kind of person. My kids and dogs are WMD type of beings.)

Designers say to be careful of heat with the Corian, due to melti-ness (?) . I have a big Breville toaster oven/air fryer that is (weirdly) probably my most-used thing in the kitchen—would it melt Corian? What if the whole toaster oven was just on like a piece of wood? I always use trivets and cutting boards due to internalized mom-scolding, but I can’t guarantee that a lemon or red wine or, idk, pudding pops or magic marker won’t hit my island. I very rarely bake, but frequently cook.

I am in healthcare and working a million hours and homeschooling half-assedly and I’m so tired and never would have chosen to remodel right now if we hadn’t had a disaster. I just want something that looks nice and requires no effort on my part. Is porcelain or Corian more bulletproof for tired moms?

Granite is reasonably priced but so-so in appearance. Disagree. With hundreds of choices, you have plenty of good options in granite.

Marble is grayer than I wanted Also cold-looking and needs to be babied.

quartz patterns I saw were a little cheesy for the price. Yes, so many are fake looking.

Some tiles are pretty but apparently ”one of the worst trends in history” according to the internet. My mom has tile (25+ years old and in perfect condition), and I like it fine -- it is not the cleaning nightmare that people claim. If "the internet" pays for your kitchen and lives in your house, it gets a vote.

Corian feels nice to touch but I guess it’s very dated now Again, if YOU like it dated doesn't matter. Plain Corian is very basic /blend-in, which works well if you want other parts of the kitchen to be the stars.

Butcher block isn’t bad but it sounds like keeping it preserved is a part-time job. Yes, love the warm and homey look, but massive upkeep.

Quartzite needs me to read it a bedtime story Depends upon the type you choose.

Is there a countertop I’m overlooking? You didn't mention laminate, which is probably the most common countertop in America; it's certainly the least expensive. You also didn't mention soapstone, stainless steel, or recycled glass.

Don't worry AT ALL about staining white Corian. Soft scrub with bleach will remove anything you put on it. As to heat, no, you can't put anything on it right out of the oven, but that was easy for me bc I have never done that anyway. I put my crockpot and rice cooker directly on it with no issue, and my Cuisinart CSO is on a wood cutting board. No idea if that's necessary, but it looks fine. And the amazing thing is that it is repairable. If you somehow damage it, it can be fused back or sanded down (by a pro). It can actually look modern or from an earlier era. It's a chameleon that way. You should get what you want, but I can tell you I am so happy with mine.

I got Cambria Torquay 4 years ago and still love it. Easy to clean up - white and quiet but with both gray and taupe in it so not as gray as marble. And no stains even when a strawberry stain is on it, etc. Most importantly I still look at it and smile every day.

Corian... I didn't choose it for my kitchen (I fell in love with quartz), but it is a star in my baths. Don't worry about "dated" in this regard! Corian is both functional AND attractive.

@ms b I'm currently in the same "countertops are the worst" boat- leaning toward quartzite if we can find the right one...just wanted to say I'm loving your posts! Thanks for the comic relief :)

Ms B, I kept the sink cut out from my Corian countertop to use as a cutting board and also to "test" the material. I put things straight from the oven on it, with no problems. You could probably put it under your toaster oven if you're worried, and it would match.

If I have a stain on my Corian, I carefully saturate a folded paper towel with bleach and put it down on the stain. The stain is gone quickly, this even works with transferred ink from Sharpies. I always use a trivet when moving hot pots and pans, but have no worries about a toaster or crock pot. And my trivets are thin silicon. So even if my roasting pan isn't directly on the counter top, it is close-like 3/8 of an inch, and there has never ever been anything like "melting" or damage. My only regret is that I have Vanilla Corian and wish I had white. The milk white is a very soft white. I love Corian.

we decided to go with granite.

I fell in love with soapstone years ago, and now that we are in the midst of our reno and need to choose a slab, all the caution about soapstone upkeep is giving me anxiety.

We got Glacier White Corian in our kitchen early this year. It’s the second house in which we’ve had it. I love how beautifully and easily it cleans up, and I love how clean and bright the counters look. We have a totally killer Breville toaster oven that is also the workhorse of our kitchen, and have had absolutely no problems with the heat from it damaging the counters.

In our last house we had soapstone with a zinc island, and it was a love/hate sort of thing for me. I loved the feel and look of the counters, and the fact that you could, if you wanted, put things on it straight out of the oven. That’s not really something that I do though, so I can’t remember using that privilege more than once or twice. The downsides for me were that I had a hard time seeing the sticky messes (my eyesight is not great), you have to somewhat embrace the fact that they won’t always look perfect, and they made our already dark kitchen feel darker. Even with the downsides, I loved them enough that they would have been an automatic choice with our new kitchen if this kitchen did not also struggle with lack of natural light.

We went with Corian because I wanted something light to bounce the light around and also because I like the feel of it. I knew from previous experience that it was super easy to keep clean, and since we were getting two different colors of cabinets, I wanted the counters to be subtle.

But I feel you on the counter struggle. We did look at all of the yards around us and I just did not fall in love with a single slab.

Well, countertops continue to be the worst!!!

We picked a porcelain slab. No one would work with it. So this thread had me feeling good about white Corian so I went to Home Depot and bought it. Unfortunately they entered nearly every detail incorrectly which took several calls to fix.

Corian guy shows up at my house and says he‘s never worked with a sink like mine or a range like mine (neither is some specialty item, both very normal). He also says the island has to be round, which is a very yucky detail that it seems we should have been warned about. Who wants an ugly roundish island?!? He is hemming and hawwing and there is talk of needing some sort of ugly shims under the sink. Also we will be lucky to have it by Xmas, at which point I will have been working from home and homeschooling with no kitchen for 4 months.

So, Corian is out due to slowness, dumb installer and roundness.

Anyway. Back at square one. I wonder if I could learn to tile and do my own countertop in less time than it would take to find a competent installer or a fabricator who returned calls.

Can you post a picture of your island or island floorplan? Shims under the sink??? Are you getting a farmsink? Round island? Did he mean the edge? I'm confused. Where are you getting new cabinets....get them to help you with the countertops.

Home Depot and Lowes here can't keep competent fabricators. One of them won't even sell solid surface right now because they have no one to fabricate it. Cast your net wider and find a different company who knows what they are doing.

Sorry, I should have been more clear. The island is just an 8’ rectangle with an apron front sink that rests on top of the countertop—island isn’t round but he says the corners must be round because you can’t have a square or squarish radius with Corian.

Guy was unfamiliar with both apron fronts and top mounts. Which seems weird—I’m not some kitchen guru but I knew these sinks existed. Anyway, it is supposed just...sit on the countertop—this doesn’t seem like a shim situation to me? For the amount of confusion the measure and the template guys had, you’d think we were installing a dodecahedron-shaped island made of fairy dust.

Cabinets were from IKEA. I would have had them do countertops, but they only had 3 to choose from. Everything else was marked “temporarily unavailable“. The contractor who rebuilt the room and assembled the cabinets doesn’t really seem to know anything about countertops, and the stone yards have also not been able to answer any questions, so I’m kind of having to figure out this piece on my own.

This sounds so frustrating. I’m so sorry! I agree that countertops are the worst. After 8 years of thinking about it, I have yet to find one I want to commit to.

This is baffling. I know about drop-in sinks, undermount sinks, farm sinks, and what else is there? (I also know about vessel sinks, but not in kitchens.) Is your range a slide-in model that would require a narrow strip of countertop to continue behind it?

Yes it is a slide in and so it needs like a 1” by 30” piece behind it. I guess I’ve seen this a lot in houses so I didn’t think it was a weird feature you needed to warn people about? Now that I know the sink and range are more complex, I can do a better job telling people before they come to measure. Home Depot is giving me a refund so at least that’s good.

This is the corner of my Corian counter. Is this too round?

hmm, that corner looks much better than what he describes. He mad it sound almost like it had to be rounded outward.

I picked Corian for my kitchen so I’m obviously not too concerned that it’s dated lol

I know it's a pain but you might want to try hunting for a good Corian fabricator on your own. My designer and I found the same shop independent of each other. The were probably the brightest spot in the whole process.

Yes it is a slide in and so it needs like a 1” by 30” piece behind it. I guess I’ve seen this a lot in houses so I didn’t think it was a weird feature you needed to warn people about?

I think, but I am no expert, that Corian can be seamed invisibly. It would be a challenge to fabricate a counter than was full counter depth except for 30 inches somewhere in the middle where only 1 inch was needed, but I don't think that's necessary with Corian.

I wouldn't call a slide-in range weird, but it is a relatively high-end feature since they cost more than freestanding.

@ms b, I am feeling for you on the heels of whatever disaster you’ve dealt with, having no kitchen, working full time plus, with kids in remote learning. It sounds overwhelming. Props to you for facing it with humor and grace.

Countertop angst.... Might be a thing amongst renovators. I have wanted soapstone for 15 years. Finally decided to go for it! Selected a lovely “Jade” slab from Vancouver Island Soapstone ... I always thought I wanted to keep it natural but am wondering if I should have them oil it. Oh dang! (First world problem .... I know!) It’s more that I love the soft, light blue of it when it’s natural... while the green really will pop if it is oiled, I think it will look too dark. Cabinets are VG Fir... island ... BM painted wood in Old Navy.

Call a couple of kitchen places near you and ask who they source their countertops through. There are usually only a couple of Fabricators around who most deal with and that might help you find a good one. If you are looking at Corona and Stone I would definitely look at Quartz.

I feel your pain! Almost went with lavastone (Pyrolave) but couldn't find a fabricator in my area.

I pulled out my Corian solid surface countertops and had Corian Quartz (yep, you read that correctly) put in today. I got Blue Carrara, and feel kind of meh about them. They look exactly like blue cheese, but I love me some whimsy.

Did a retro kitchen using Cambria Bala Blue in two of my homes (see pic below).

I do wish there were better quartz colors.....

I've had tile, Corian, granite and quartz, and if you are a Honda gal (me too BTW), and want something durable and easy to clean, go with quartz. Corian (solid surface) will scratch, stain, and scorch. Tiles - think about grout. It doesn't matter if it's tiny grout, it's still the WORST thing on the planet to clean. Marble - fuggudaboutit - stains. Everything else has to be sealed once a year or oiled, etc. You're working and doing Covid-homeschooling? Do yourself a favor and find a quartz you can stomach.

p.s. - You missed your calling as a writer - you should start a blog....in your copious spare time ;)

Sorry to find your post so late...

Quartz will not require sealing, but is not heat proof. The answer is to always have hot pads or a dry cutting board on the countertop before pulling things from the oven.

Granite does require sealing, and some slab areas will "pop" in spaces that have mica on the slab. Your island area, being so large may require a seam, and structural support for granite slabs. Further, granite does not like lemon juie, tomatoes, or any other citrus/acid/vinegar, which can etch the surface.

Marble etches easily, and requires a great deal of maintenance. It is discouraged in areas with hard water, hates citrus, and can be too difficult for people with small children.

Avoid the tiles if you can-the grout lines and lack of seamless surface could make you crazy. If one tile should crack, you may need a replacement.

Butcher block is stunning (as is slate), but does require more care than your schedule probably permits.

Corian and better laminates work well for many people, given due care.

Have you made a final choice, yet?

White Corian seems to be all the rage in the modern designs I've been looking at (and have chosen it myself in my build). Noisy dark granite seems to be what's dated.

@Robbin Capers I have not had a single client choose granite this year. Last year we had several go that way with honed or leathered finishes. This year is firmly in quartz and marble territory with some butcher block, concrete and quartzite thrown in. Darker counters also seem to be less popular with my clients, no matter what the materials, unless its a black and white kitchen which is very on-trend at the moment.

White Corian seems to be all the rage in the modern designs I've been looking at

I've been enamored of white Corian ever since seeing acres of it in a designer show house about 35 years ago. Meanwhile, a friend who has it is convinced that if she wants to sell her house it will have to be replaced....

I’ve had it all, really, everything except concrete. The easiest by far for me is soapstone. It never goes out of style, it’s timeless, nothing fazes it. Just have to find the right slab. Granite in the bathroom is my choice, but soapstone in the kitchen is my all time favorite.

I had two offers at or above asking price before we even put a sign in our yard - we had a solid surface island and laminate perimeter counters. If it's done well and it matches the esthetic of the home, it doesn't matter what the material is.

Previous home had laminate that was 10 years old and looked new...simple beige tone. We had 12 offers with 6 over asking but to be fair it was in the Boston area and homes sell insanely fast regardless of countertop type. Now I’m trying to decide on countertops for my small kitchen in my little salt box home. I’ve been given Silestone Suede Charcoal as a good option against creamy white shaker cabinets with a darker wood island. My stress is I’ve seen several complaints with this Silestone option but can’t seem to find anyone who has it and love it??? I’ve not found one granite slab I liked and husband wants a charcoal colored counter.

Probably too late - but we went with rectified porcelain tile for durability. It's black and looks like slate and everyone who looks at it thinks it's slate, which is exactly the look I was going for, without actually being real stone and the biohazards etc.

Schluter SS edging and cove.

Epoxy grout for the sanitary and clean up, but geez, that stuff is hard to work with.

"I've never been able to get past associating granite with gravestones. The thought of a kitchen with gravestone counters gives me the creeps. On the other hand, if someone really loved their kitchen, when they died, the family could recycle that countertop to be with them for eternity :-)"

LMAO!!

I just put wilsonart solid surface (Arctic Dune, white) on my ikea bodbyn cabs with an ikea walnut butcher block island. I love both. And I’ve had marble, soapstone, solid walnut countertops in previous homes I loved those also but they came with maintenance. These solid surface - although it’s been only 6 months - feel wonderful to the touch and are a breeze to clean I can’t imagine ever getting anything else.

Some inspiration for soapstone. This is Brazilian Jade from Vancouver Island Soapstone... this is our layout for our counters. We will leave it natural, we can always oil it later. It was raining when we templated ... it will be light blue when installed... to start anyway!