Alternatives to Carrara marble for worktops

[Umblubblub]

We're having a new kitchen fitted and love the look of Carrara marble worktops. We think that marble will be too porous for a family kitchen, so we're looking for an alternative. We've so far looked at silestone and Caesar stone but can't decide.
Has anyone got worktops made out of either silestone or Caesar stone and would you recommend them?

[Shufflebum]

We were the same, ended up going for colonial white granite in a leather finish. Not swirly like marble but I love it.

[purplepingu]

We've just ordered a Quartz that looks like marble, it's through a worktop seller in Yorkshire but if you have a look on International Stone's website at the Quartz section you can see the one we ordered on there. I've forgot the name of t but it's absolutely gorgeous.

[purplepingu]

This is a photo of the slab we've ordered.

[purplepingu]

One thing we found with Silestone is that the white base isn't really that white. The one we've picked really took some finding. We've been looking for around a year.

Our units are white gloss and matte zebrano grey so we really needed the whitest base possible and Silestone just wasn't white enough.

[namechangedtoday15]

We've just had quartz fitted that is similar to carrara marble.

I did also consider a new design by Compaq which was beautiful but over our budget.

[purplepingu]

We looked at the Compac one but found it only came in 20mm thick whereas we wanted 30mm.

[Fairybust]

We've got unistone staturio ( I think that is how it's spelt).

It's really subtle amd I love it.

[GrievousDeviousness]

Pingu, if you don't mind me asking, roughly how much was your slab? We're in the process of hunting down a white based worktop (we've got white and grey units, too!) and from the website it looks like International Stone's quartz might fit the bill.... so long as it's within budget!

[purplepingu]

It was significantly cheaper than Compac's price! We've got four slabs on order and I'm not sure of the exact price as my husband's dealt with it.

You'd need to find a company who buy from International Stone to be able to have it, we're using one in Yorkshire but I'm sure there'll be people all over the country.

[Gusthetheatrecat]

I was desperate for marble, but felt we'd stain it, so reluctantly gave it up. The stone place we went to had quartz but the saleswoman wasn't very positive about it, so we ended up going for granite.
We drove out to a wholesaler / stone yard / huge place and looked at TONNES of different slabs before we found ours. As the previous poster said, it's not veined like marble but it's beautiful: grey toned with occasional crystals in it, and not at all 'brown and speckly' which I wanted to avoid,

[Umblubblub]

Thank you for all the replies, I will check them all out.
Pingu and Fairy, love both of your worktops, definitely along the lines of what we want in our new kitchen!

[Umblubblub]

Namechange, do you remember what your Quarz was called? It's lovely.

[namechangedtoday15]

Its by Luna Stone, its called Bianco Carrara. This is the slab we chose (its got a protective cover on it, you need to look at the top left to see the colour)

[IvyNumpty]

Can you tell me the address of a wholesaler/stone yard where I can choose my kitchen worktop that looks the closest to white marble