How to Choose the Right Countertop for your Home
Sandra Oster just started a new interior design adventure in beautiful, sunny Boca Raton, Florida and our latest task is finding the right countertop for the bathroom, showers, kitchen, bars, and even tables. So how do we find the “right” countertop?
Gather your color schemes and head out to explore material choices.
Seeing the raw space in a new house is inspirational. You see the scale and proportion of the rooms and confirm your purchases and it directs you to future selections. Gather inspiration from your home and find your color scheme and palette.
Consider your lifestyle…
Countertops are the second most used surface in your home, next to your flooring; you’ll entertain at them, cook on them, and you’ll look at them every single day, multiple times. Choosing the right countertop for your kitchen may be different than the countertop you choose for you bathroom. How much time do you have to dedicate to maintenance and how often will they be used, and by whom? Some materials require polishing and waxing several times a year. If you like to entertain and have guest over often, you may not want to have to worry about a porous surface and guarding the red wine glasses. Soapstone is a beautiful material, but requires a lot of maintenance to extend the life of this stone.
Most importantly, what inspires you?
You can choose a countertop in just about any color in most materials and at any cost. Stainless steel is a set color and wood offers various shades, but when you choose a natural stone countertop, the choices are endless. Marble, Granite, Quartzite, Soapstone; there are so many choices for your kitchen countertops. So how do you choose? Personally, I love spending the day in a stone yard. I visited a Slab Yard not far from this Florida home and this may have been the most exciting and creative part for me as an interior designer. Winding my way through the pathways of stone that emerge and seeing nature’s raw product and natural beauty is amazing to witness and so powerful to observe. Tiles and colors for the house had already been chosen, so we strolled through walls of marble, granite, and quartzite titans each with their own distinctive properties and waited for nature to pull us in…all the time coordinating with our original tile and paint color choices.
We found several options that would have blended well, but when we paired our paint and tile samples next to the stone, the decision became clear as we saw the turquoise ribbons come alive in the granite. Have you ever watched as someone’s eye color appeared to change with what they’re wearing? Natural stone can pull-off the same effect based on how it is paired. Deep greens can appear black, and grays can take on a blue tone.
