Marble and Granite are the most popular choices for kitchen and bathroom countertops. They offer durability and beauty of natural stones. Their unique color patterns and luxury feel fit right in with contemporary, as well as traditional décor.
What is Marble?
According to Geology.com, marble is a metamorphic rock, mostly composed out of the mineral calcite and contains other minerals, such as pyrite, quartz, mica, clay, and iron oxides. It is formed at convergent plate boundaries where large areas of Earth’s crust are exposed to regional metamorphism.
What Does Marble Look Like?
Marble comes in a large variety of colors ranging from pure white to black, white being the most popular choice for home decor. Based on the type of marble, it normally has a deviating veiny pattern going across the entire slab.
Granite shares many similarities with marble, but the main visual distinction between the two is that granite tends to have a spotty pattern rather than a veiny one.
Both granite and marble are not manmade materials, but pure products of nature, therefore they do not have continuously identical patterns. No two pieces of stone are the same and even one piece can have unexpected deviations in the spotting or veining, which sometimes might look out of place or get mistaken for defects.
How Are Marble Countertops Made?
Marble forms in large deposits in nature, which can be hundreds of feet long. Using heavy duty machinery, marble is harvested by breaking it down into cubes, which are later cut into slabs and sold to manufacturers worldwide. The slabs get fabricated into units based on the industry. Eventually, they become walls, floors, kitchen and bathroom countertops and parts of other miscellaneous projects.
Maintaining Marble
Even though marble is an extremely durable and long-lasting material, it needs some care and maintenance to preserve its unique beauty. When buying a marble top bathroom vanity, make sure to find out if the marble is sealed, which is extremely important in order to avoid staining. At Chans Furniture all of our vanities are sold with sealed countertops. Marble needs to undergo resealing once a year, no matter where you got it from.
Buying a Marble Countertop
Natural beauty and unique one of a kind patterns is what makes marble so desirable in today's market. For many decades it has greatly impacted the perception of luxury in interior decor.
Marble is found in various regions of the planet. It takes many years for it to grow and form while being exposed to extreme temperature changes, rain, humidity, wild animals, and sun's UV rays. The surroundings in which the stone develops leave their mark in marble's complex and sophisticated patterns. After marble is harvested and made into a piece of interior decor, it might show various signs of nature's influence.
Your new bathroom vanity countertop might have some spots, veins or slight discolorations, which deviate from an ongoing pattern. To those who are not aware of the complex process of marble development, these deviations might seem like defects of craftsmanship.
While a perfect pattern can be achieved in a natural slab of marble, it would require for the not so perfect ones to be disposed of. Tons of natural minerals, that took thousands of years to form would end up in the landfill, which would also increase the cost of the already expensive non-man-made stone.
Chans Furniture is an eco-friendly company and we strongly believe in preserving nature's resources and embracing natural beauty in any shape or form.