August 2008
Find the best countertops
Stylish and strong
Whether your kitchen is a workplace or a showplace—or both—you can find great values on the right countertop for your needs.
Pick the wrong type, however, and you could end up wasting thousands, according to our tests.
We sliced and diced on 11 counter materials from leading brands, stained them with 20 common foods and products, and set hot pots of oil on them, among other tests. Our work tests revealed each material’s strengths and weaknesses but few brand differences. That’s why we rate counters by material and not by brand.
Here’s what we found:
Laminates shine. Laminate excelled at stain- and heat-resistance and withstood our abrasive pads. Fun patterns (try boomerang), interesting colors (hollyberry, anyone?), and detailed edges make laminate worth a second look. Plus it’s inexpensive and easy to clean.
Finishes are important. Butcher block, concrete, granite, limestone, marble, stainless steel, and even laminate are sold with different sealers or finishes, which, we found, can affect performance. Varnished butcher block was extremely stain-resistant but terrible at everything else. Butcher block with an oil finish was better at resisting heat, but stains spread, making them impossible to remove.
Similarly, concrete with a topical sealer, which forms a film on the surface, was better at resisting stains and not so good at handling heat. But when a penetrating sealer was used instead, those results were reversed.
We found that laminate with textured finishes hid imperfections better than those with flat finishes.
But granites with a proprietary sealer, such as those sold by Stonemark with the PermaShield sealer, performed no better than standard granite. DuPont’s Kashmir White granite stained much worse, even after we resealed it.
Green has a way to go. Richlite says its paper and resin countertops are green in part because the paper comes from certified, managed forests. But Richlite's resin is petroleum based. While Richlite was relatively stain-resistant, it was susceptible to cuts and abrasion.
Corian’s Terra solid surfacing is supposed to be "easier on the planet" because it’s made with scraps from the factory. But those scraps make up only 6 to 13 percent of the counter’s content. Terra performed similarly to other solid surfacing in our tests.
We sliced and diced on 11 counter materials from leading brands, stained them with 20 common foods and products, and set hot pots of oil on them, among other tests. Our work tests revealed each material’s strengths and weaknesses but few brand differences. That’s why we rate counters by material and not by brand.
Here’s what we found:
Laminates shine. Laminate excelled at stain- and heat-resistance and withstood our abrasive pads. Fun patterns (try boomerang), interesting colors (hollyberry, anyone?), and detailed edges make laminate worth a second look. Plus it’s inexpensive and easy to clean.
Finishes are important. Butcher block, concrete, granite, limestone, marble, stainless steel, and even laminate are sold with different sealers or finishes, which, we found, can affect performance. Varnished butcher block was extremely stain-resistant but terrible at everything else. Butcher block with an oil finish was better at resisting heat, but stains spread, making them impossible to remove.
Similarly, concrete with a topical sealer, which forms a film on the surface, was better at resisting stains and not so good at handling heat. But when a penetrating sealer was used instead, those results were reversed.
We found that laminate with textured finishes hid imperfections better than those with flat finishes.
But granites with a proprietary sealer, such as those sold by Stonemark with the PermaShield sealer, performed no better than standard granite. DuPont’s Kashmir White granite stained much worse, even after we resealed it.
Green has a way to go. Richlite says its paper and resin countertops are green in part because the paper comes from certified, managed forests. But Richlite's resin is petroleum based. While Richlite was relatively stain-resistant, it was susceptible to cuts and abrasion.
Corian’s Terra solid surfacing is supposed to be "easier on the planet" because it’s made with scraps from the factory. But those scraps make up only 6 to 13 percent of the counter’s content. Terra performed similarly to other solid surfacing in our tests.
