- 17th October 2015
- Posted by: Granite & Marble Specialties
- Category: Marble, Granite, Granite Countertops
Bathroom design is your chance to get creative, excited, and have fun! A bathroom is like a design secret inside your home, and you want your guests to be surprised and delighted when they find it. Granite Marble Specialties is the go-to countertop fabricator in the Pacific Northwest, and we’d love to help you create the perfect bathroom that will be both functional and beautiful.
The first question you have to ask yourself, of course, is if you’d like to go with a vanity top or real, hand-crafted countertops.
Q: What’s the difference between vanity tops and countertops?
A: Functionally, these are the same thing: the counter and sink area in your bathroom. The difference is that “vanity tops” are pre-made, usually from synthetic materials, and you can purchase them online or at any hardware story. Though they’re easier and cheaper to procure and install, they will have a lifespan that’s the fraction of real stone countertops and will show their wear quickly. Furthermore, you won’t have the same range of choices that you get with a custom installation. And custom installation is all about the options!
Colors & Materials
Get creative! We love an all-white marble bathroom that looks like it was carved from a cloud, or the 1920s-esque opulence of all-black granite. And of course, if you’d like to do something a little more colorful, you can get away with pretty much any color in the bathroom. Looking at bright hues in a centralized room like your kitchen every day might feel a little overwhelming, but pops of yellow, blue, green, or pretty much any color can bring life to a bathroom. Quartzite is a great choice for matching the exact shade you like, or you might choose a textured agate Caesarstone quartzite that can be a breathtaking compliment to a textured backsplash or tiled floor. The options for color, style, and material are endless, and we hope you have fun choosing!
More Options
The bathroom receives a lot less wear and tear than your kitchen—especially if you don’t have any children—which broadens your options a little in terms of materials. Though bathrooms receive regular use, they aren’t exposed to things like kitchen grease, searing pots and pans, or a rainbow of food and drink, meaning that you may want to consider using marble rather than granite. Granite is typically recommended for kitchen use because it stands up better to the acidic substances a countertops is often exposed to, but most bathroom substances are alkaline, which won’t harm marble, which can look stunning in a bathroom where the luminescence of the stone somehow makes the space feel softer and cleaner.
Choose Your Slab
Bathroom countertops aren’t as large as those in your kitchen, meaning that there are often more options in terms of the stone itself; you can sometimes even repurpose stone that would otherwise be unusably small. New Jersey interior designer Tracey Stephens, a specialist in eco-friendly kitchen and bath design, told AboutHome that typical slabs are about 130” x 70”, but bathroom countertops are often much smaller than that. “I have gotten many beautiful pieces of granite or marble from my fabricator that have been left over from other projects,” he said, “and I’m able to pass these cost savings on to my clients.” And even if you don’t have the connections to find a wonderful granite scrap, you can often choose a nicer and more expensive slab of stone for your bathroom than for your kitchen because you’ll be using less.
Any More Question?
Come into Granite and Marble Specialties! We’ll walk you through all the possibilities for your bathroom design and show you your options first hand.