Kitchen worktops

[Greenvalleymama]

We are in the planning stages of a new kitchen, we're agreed on the kind of look we want (fairly traditional farmhouse kitchen to fit with our house). We want cream doors and love the look of solid wood worktops but have heard they stain easily and I'm concerned we're not up to the job of maintaining them! I'm not a fan of wood effect laminate, and we have granite now and fancy a change. If you have real wood kitchen surfaces, how do you keep them looking nice? And are there any other types of worktop we could consider, with a wood effect that are more hard wearing than real wood? Any help much appreciated xx

It might be worth going to a specialist worktop shop to look at a much wider range of wood effect laminates than you can get in Wickes etc.

The main problem with real wood is round the sink. Would your kitchen design work with quartz or granite round the sink and wood everywhere else?

We have a wooden table which was a pain for years and forever needed re-oiling. It's been maintenance-free since I slapped a few coats of matt varnish on it. I don't know if this is good advice for worktops but I would do the same again.

We had a cream shaker style kitchen fitted last year and I always wanted solid oak work surfaces. My (brilliant) kitchen fitter persuaded me against it and made me go and look at the Benchmarx canyon range. When they showed it to me in the show room I thought they’d mixed up the laminate with the actual wood. It looks brilliant and it’s soooo durable. My friend did her kitchen at the same time but with solid wood. It already has loads of marks and she’s forever fretting about it. Plus it was ££££ more than mine! I’ll post a photo in a mo

Here you go!

We've had wood for over 12 years,it's been fab and would have it again. No issues with stains /marks around the sink. T h I can't remember what it is,beech I think?

Dh says oak!

@MyThirdBestWig We will definitely go and have a look around at the different options. Having a different surface around the sink is a possibility, I hadn't thought of that.

@BellMcEnd wow that looks lovely, and I would never have guessed it wasn't solid wood! I've written the name down in my little kitchen ideas notebook and will investigate further! Thank you.

Interested in this too. We have a howdens laminate worktop in our rental and it's pretty good except that the plonker that installed it left a seam near the sink, which is of course allowing water in and expanding, despite our best efforts.
Was originally pining after Corian etc for our kitchen remodel but tbh a quality laminate installed with thought is great, and sooooo much cheaper

In terms of practicality I think you’ll struggle going from granite to anything else Op 😏. We’ve had various work surfaces over the years and find granite to be the best. The best thing is its heat resistance properties (as I’m sure you know). You don’t need to worry about being precious about it as there’s no faffing around with placing heat mats/trivets etc down(!). It takes a beating and still looks as good as it did the day it went down..

We couldn't work out what type of worktop that we needed for our kitchen so started doing our research.

I found this really helpful article on IDS which really helped us establish what type of worktop we needed. We went for a laminate one in the end.