Laura Heynike: How to choose the right benchtop for your kitchen
You can leave the sparkly paua or shell benchtop firmly in the ‘90s.
Benchtops are by far the hardest kitchen finish to decide on. It can easily blow out your renovation budget and the product can drastically alter the look and feel of your kitchen.
It appears that every man and his dog imports some type of benchtop material, and as a consumer it can be difficult to navigate through the vast selection available finding the perfect fit for your design.
The best thing to start with is the look of the benchtop that is most appealing.
Do you like a concrete look, natural stone, marble or a solid colour? This will help narrow down the broad selection of composites you need to select from. So if you have no idea what you like you will get overwhelmed very quickly!
In terms of benchtop trends, they conservatively change every few years as technology develops. Trends don’t drastically change, marble has been around for years, as has stone.
Concrete look is still showing quite strong in the last five years, and you can leave the sparkly paua or shell benchtop firmly in the ‘90s.
Secondly, we look at your budget. This will dictate what composite you choose using your selected graphic.
The main types in order of cost are natural marble, stone, compact surfaces, engineered stone and high pressure laminate.
There are some cost effective granite ranges that are the same price as a high pressure laminate so if you are on the lower end of the budget you can keep an eye out for these.
All of these composites should have your desired graphic finish available.
We specify a lot of compact surfaces and engineered stone due to the selection, material performance and low maintenance, but we love heading out to the stone warehouses and hand-selecting a slab with our clients.
The experience is truly rewarding when our clients walk into their kitchen every day and see the one-ofa-kind stone or marble just for them.
Lastly, a few tricks about benchtops.
You can finish the edges off in a couple of ways. Mitred edge is the most seamless if you have a waterfall end otherwise if it is just a benchtop on the top surface with no vertical edge, a pencil edge is the most popular. The European trend which is slowly trickling into our style is to go slightly thinner on the profile some even having undercut edges so it appears sleek and less bulky.
”It appears that every man and his dog imports some type of benchtop material, and as a consumer it can be difficult to navigate through the vast selection available ...”
If you are having an undermounted or butlers sink, an HPL isn’t suitable due to water tightness, and most kitchens opt for an under-mounted sink so you don’t get the water catchment around the drainer.
The annoying thing to remember about a kitchen renovation is that the benchtop is the last thing to be installed.
So once your cabinets are in and levelled, a template is then
done, and the benchtop installed seven to ten days later. This makes it tricky because the final fit-off can’t be completed until this step is completed.
I personally wouldn’t DIY a benchtop as from experience it is rare to come across a straight wall and doing the cutouts is a tricky job. It’s best to leave it to the professionals.