The Best Kitchen Countertop Materials, Compared

There is no single best countertop. There is a best one for how you cook and how much looking after you will do. A showroom offers hundreds of colors and patterns, but they belong to about ten kinds of material, and each kind behaves in a known way. Choose the kind first, by your habits, then the color.

Two questions settle most of it. Do you prepare food directly on the counter and cook hard, with hot pans, lemons and red wine? Then avoid soft, porous stone. And will you wipe, oil or seal a surface on schedule, or do you want to forget it is there?

Material	Strengths	Watch for
Granite	Hard, takes heat well, wide range of colors, few visible seams	Many granites need sealing from time to time; can be costly
Marble	Striking natural pattern, cool surface that suits pastry	Softer; acids such as lemon and vinegar etch it; needs regular sealing
Soapstone	Needs no sealing	Soft; shows knife marks and scratches
Slate	Needs no sealing	Brittle, most of all at corners
Engineered quartz	Hard, even in color, low maintenance	Costly; protect it from hot pans
Concrete	Smooth, made to any shape, can carry color or inlays	Needs sealing and a skilled maker; costly
Solid surface	No visible seams, repairable, non-porous, matching sinks	Marks from heat, knives and scratches
Laminate	Lowest cost, hard-wearing, quick to fit	Not heat resistant; can chip or scratch
Tile	Affordable, endless colors, ceramic is non-porous	Grout lines need regular cleaning
Wood	Warm, an ideal work surface, heat resistant	Needs regular care; shows knife marks; wide planks can warp or crack

Natural stone

Granite is the common choice for good reason: it is durable, shrugs off heat and comes in everything from white to midnight black. Marble is softer and more refined, a fine surface for baking that will show knife scars and dull spots where acid has sat. The Natural Stone Institute explains the difference in plain terms. Stones made mostly of silicates, such as quartz and feldspar, resist most kitchen acids, while calcareous stones, made mainly of calcium carbonate, can be dulled or etched by products containing lemon, vinegar or other acids. It also notes that sealing makes stone more stain resistant, not stain proof, and that even where stone withstands heat a trivet is recommended (Natural Stone Institute).

Soapstone and slate need no sealing. Soapstone is soft and will show marks; slate can chip at an edge.

Engineered quartz

Engineered stone is ground quartz bound into slabs. It is hard, consistent from slab to slab and asks for little care. The care instructions of one large maker say hot cookware should always go on a trivet or hot pad and that a cutting board should always be used.

Concrete and solid surface

Precast concrete counters are smooth and flat and can be colored or set with glass. They are heavy, need sealing and need a specialist to make and fit them. Solid surface, an acrylic or polyester material, goes the other way: pieces are fused so the joints disappear, which suits a long run, and a matching sink can be part of the same piece. It scratches and scorches more easily than stone, but damage can be sanded out.

Laminate, tile and wood

Laminate costs least and wears better than its reputation, as long as hot pans stay off it. Tile gives the widest choice of color for little money, with grout as the price. Wood counters come as edge grain, long strips glued with the edge up; end grain, the true butcher block, with short blocks set on end; and wide plank, the most handsome and the most likely to warp or crack. Wood is the kindest surface to work on and needs the most regular care.

When the counter is chosen and fitted

Choose the material while the kitchen is being designed, with the cabinets, backsplash and appliances in front of you, since it has to sit with all of them. Fitting comes late. On our kitchen remodel timeline the template for the counters is made after the cabinets are installed, and the counters go in after that, followed by the backsplash.

In an apartment, ask one more question early: how the slab gets upstairs. Buildings commonly keep a contractor to the service elevator, at times the superintendent sets, and the slab has to fit inside it. If a long piece will not fit, the fabricator plans a seam, and it is better to choose where that seam goes than to discover it on delivery day.

The sink is chosen with the counter, since the way it mounts depends on the material; see our guide to the best kitchen sinks. For the whole job, see kitchen renovation in NYC, and for finished examples the kitchen gallery.

Questions people ask