Differences Between Granite and Quartz Countertops | Choose the Best Countertops For Your Kitchen

okay you've decided to renovate your kitchen you know you're going to be spending thousands and thousands of dollars on beautiful cabinets and countertops it's one of the most expensive things you'll probably really spend money on in your home and it's an incredibly stressful experience and you don't want to screw it up and one of the big questions everybody has or at least i had was quartz versus granite we're going to break it down so that we understand the differences between both of them the advantages of each and which one is going to be right for you so let's get into it so first of all let's talk granite what it is and what are the advantages and disadvantages of granite okay so granite is a natural stone so it comes from the earth basically there are granite quarries around the world and they take these big giant blocks out of the earth and then slice them up basically like a banana loaf and then polish them and then they make it into your kitchen the biggest advantages of granite really there are big they're kind of two main ones first of all it's very heat resistant so you can put a hot pan on there and not really have to worry and that's because of course it is solid rock so one of the second advantages to granite is that it resists chips so it's very hard because it's a rock and it's very difficult to chip granite if you put a cast iron pot maybe a hot cast iron pot it's probably going to be fine now i still probably wouldn't leave that pot there forever not saying it's never going to chip but basically it resists chips very well because it's very hard but let's talk about one of the disadvantages of granite which it's really not that big of a deal but it is definitely worth knowing is that granite requires to be sealed probably at least about once a year i'd recommend it if you're spending this much money to get a professional to come in and steal your granite they do sell household sealers that you can just spray on i use them for for the marble that i have around the house and the reason you're going to want to seal it is because granite being a natural stone is very porous so what that means is is that if you spill something like you know red wine or tomato sauce or something like that it's going to actually seep into the rock and it's going to permanently stain it you don't want that you've just spent all this money gone through all the headaches of going through a renovation you don't want to be one glass of red wine away from ruining your perfectly good granites now you can repair granite but it's best to just avoid that completely by having it sealed so that way if it's it resists staining that way okay so now let's talk about granite's biggest competitor which is quartz so quartz unlike granite is a manufactured product so it's man-made it does not come from the earth now there is basically about 93 stone in quartz so it's basically stone that's kind of ground up the other seven percent is going to be a resin as well as some pigment to be able to kind of create the color and the designs of whatever quartz product you're using so one of the disadvantages with quartz is that because it's seven percent resin around seven to ten percent resin uh that will melt if you put something very hot so if you take a cast iron right out of the oven you literally probably have seconds or to be able to make sure that it doesn't melt your quartz so you can easily solve this by just putting down a heat pad but it's just something to note that if someone maybe comes to your house and doesn't know that you're using quartz maybe they're not used to it they might put it on your beautiful quartz and they might scorch it i do think that they're getting better over time to be able to be more heat resistant but that is just something to consider when you're looking at quartz is that it's not going to be as heat resistant as as a natural stone like granite so one of the biggest advantages to quartz and why a lot of people choose it is that it's non-porous so what that means is that it's going to resist the stains that we talked about with granite and does not require any maintenance of a sealer so that's great because that means that if you spill that glass of red wine or if you get some tomato sauce on the quartz that means that it's not going to seep in and leave those kind of ugly shadowy marks now i will say that i have had quartz for a while and there are little tiny stains so it's really important to remember that it's not perfect it's not always going to be perfect it's a manufactured product everything kind of sort of wears out in time but it's going to wear really well it does resist stains a lot better than a natural stone wood so i'm exceptionally lazy in the kitchen so i'm not gonna lie if i have people that come over and you know they're here late at night we're drinking wine and yadda yadda we're cooking i'm not the type to necessarily diligently scrub down my kitchen at midnight or one in the morning before going to bed i might just leave that until the morning so if you're like me and you do that then quartz is a really great product for you because the resistance is staining basically if you're leaving it on there for several hours i've never had a problem i go in clean up my kitchen in the morning and i notice that there's no problems so i think if i had granite i would probably be a lot more concerned especially if i wasn't diligently sealing it okay so that's kind of the like features of both just so you have like a good rundown honestly like none of these things that i've talked about for me are really disqualifying i think both are actually really amazing products and you would be really happy to put both in your home so if you're like me and you're like exceptionally stressed about making this decision and you're like oh my god i don't want to make the wrong decision because you're spending so much money and so much time i mean renovations are so stressful you don't want to screw it up so i'm here to tell you i think you're going to be happy with either product yes you have to seal granite but it's not that big of a deal yes technically if you put a really hot pan on quartz it might scorch the quartz but you just have to use heat pads and be careful neither one to me are incredibly disqualifying but that arrives at what i think is probably the most important factor of which one to choose which is which one do you like which one's beautiful to you right personally i think for me i will say there's always beauty and a natural stone i think there's always something really amazing about something that's come from the earth that is not just manufactured in a facility that it is something like there's just there's just beauty in that right like i think there's some beautiful granites out there i will say i do think that granite suits more of a traditional style so if you like more of a traditional looking kitchen if that's more your design style i think you're probably going to be a lot better off with granite with granite the look of it there's a lot more movement there's a lot more color there's oftentimes little speckly pieces in there that you're just probably less likely to see in a court so if you really like that look you really can't go wrong with granite so quartz so quartz i think is really great for people that like more of a modern design style people that like kind of that clean fresh contemporary look um you can get you can have kind of a marble effect throughout you can have quartz that has a lot of veining you can have quartz that's very simple you can have quartz that also has little kind of speckly pieces inside of it um there's a lot of different options that you can do with quartz because as a manufactured product uh it's really kind of a huge range of options that you have available to you lots of different manufacturers that come up with tons of different finishes but i do think it favors people that prefer that sort of modern design style i'll also just touch on price i think in the end let's be real like they're both pretty expensive options there are cheaper options out there like butcher block or laminate that are not maybe going to be as durable they're not going to last you as long but they are cheaper options both of them both granite and quartz are quite expensive the difference which i think is quite interesting is that granite is priced based more on rarity so it's not really quality based right it's going to be some granites in the world are exceptionally rare and thus going to be a lot more expensive some granites are more common um and going to be cheaper i think the cheapest granite is going to come in a little bit cheaper than the cheapest quartz from what i've seen but there are really pricey granites from really rare mines where it's just really difficult to source i think quartz being a manufactured product they can always make more right so the prices are generally going to be quite set that's going to be more based on quality so more established manufacturers are going to charge more money for higher end quartz so i want to say because you all know i always have an opinion i'm going to say that i personally prefer quartz to granite and that's mostly just because i like that modern design style i will say there is always something beautiful coming from a natural stone that you can't replicate in a man-made product but i will say that granite typically suits a more traditional kitchen and that's just not my style but that's my style that's not your style one of the best things about design to me is that everybody has their own style and you can learn to appreciate everybody's style individually one last thing i'm going to touch on that i don't know i just feel like there's someone out there that maybe needs to hear this because i needed to hear this i don't recommend putting marble in a kitchen so this pains me to say it because i love marble you know just this last weekend on saturday some friends are doing their kitchen and we were looking at slabs on the weekend and i don't know about you but like i like going to check out tiles and slabs of marble on the weekend because i'm a designer that's just what i love to do so i love marble as much as the next person truly i do i just don't think kitchen countertops are the best place to put marble marble is generally although different marbles have different levels of hardness and durability i will say that generally marble is a very porous stone and thus is not definitely seal definitely you have to seal marble but it's generally so porous that i wouldn't recommend it on such a high traffic area like kitchen countertops there are beautiful wonderful marbles out there that you can put in fireplaces maybe in end tables and side tables there's lots of places you can put marble i just personally wouldn't recommend it in a kitchen so i just feel like there's someone out there on the internet that needs to hear that because like because i looked for a thousand different ways for me to justify how maybe i could make marble work and i'm here to tell you i wouldn't recommend it now if you don't really cook in your kitchen and you're just there for show um then great then maybe marble work for you but i like to cook i like to cook i'm a messy cook as i mentioned earlier so to me marble would never work so maybe you're like me and if you are and you love marble and you're looking to justify it i'm here to tell you go with something like quartz my kitchen there's a lot of veining in the courts that i have which to me replicates a lot of what i love about marble um and this to me is kind of a beautiful way of having the benefits of quartz while still having a little bit of a marble effect so maybe that might work for you um anyways i hope you got some value out of that if you're doing a kitchen renovation let me know i'd love to hear from you down below in the comments um if you're interested to design content feel free to subscribe and we can chat here every week and don't forget to like this video so other people can find it and that's it see you all next time thanks [Music] bye [Music] you

Channel: Nick Lewis

Views: 114,268

Rating: 4.9666309 out of 5

Keywords: Quartz vs Granite, granite vs quartz, granite countertops, granite vs quartz countertops, granite vs quartz vs marble, granite vs quartz countertops pros and cons, granite vs quartz heat resistance, granite countertops cost, granite vs quartz countertops heat resistance, granite vs quartz staining, kitchen renovation, kitchen countertops, Quartz vs granite kitchen countertops, best countertops

Id: MVsPpoQK7eM

Length: 10min 10sec (610 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 16 2020