Please talk to me re your Corian or Silestone worktops

[whataboutbob]

I’m renovating a rental flat and would like a good looking kitchen worktop, without stretching to quartz or granite. I don’t know much about Corian or Silestone except they seem to look better than your standard MDF worktop. I’d love to hear about their pros and cons. Thanks in advance.

I've had some silestone. Not that much cheaper (if at all)! It was great. All the properties of granite but less maintenance. I liked that I could have the sink as a molded in bit so no joins.

I'm assuming it's a very high end rental if you are considering Silestone? I don't know much about Corian but Silestone is one of the many brands of quartz (one of the more expensive "name" brands - so you might want to consider others too). If you go for a light or medium coloured speckled or veined quartz they are generally don't show the marks much/are easy to keep clean (dark ones can show water marks more) as well as looking great.

But the negative is that they cannot cope with heat (because they are made partly of resin) so you'd need to be sure your renters used a heat matt/trivet. Also any worktop (even quartz or granite) can potentially chip if your renters drop something really heavy like a cast iron pan... So personally if I was going to be renting it out and so might be concerned about damage, I'd spend hundreds on a nice looking, good quality laminate (maybe something like square edged Duropal?), rather than thousands on a stone worktop.

I bought a house that already had white Corian worktops. Very practical - any stains can easily be removed with Barkeepers or Jif cream with bleach. I am careful not to put hot pans on it.

Corian doesn't usually work out cheaper than quartz or granite! It's lovely though, we had it in a previous house - best thing was no joins.

Lunastone is very similar to Silestone (identical if I recall correctly!) and around 30% cheaper.

If you search on this forum you'll find some feedback. We had it fitted 5 years ago and still very happy. This is the manufacturer and they fit directly themselves:

www.quartzworktopsdirect.com/

We have Earthstone which I think is the same type of stuff as Corian in our current and previous house benefits as others have said, no joins, at our old house with a tiny kitchen , we had the draining board moulded in which saved space. You can also get rid of small scratches etc easily. However I would say, in our previous house we had like a dark grey/black granite type look. It was lovely but showed scratches up lots so we ended up doing lots of buffing to get it back to looking new. New house we have a lighter colour white/light grey... doesn't show scratches at all..

If you want to keep costs down you could consider solid laminate which is around £500 for a 4 metre length. It is 100% waterproof and IMO the slim 12mm thickness looks very nice.

I had Silestone installed about 12 years ago. I've left cast iron saucepans on it from the hob/oven dishes without incident.

DH has been dripping teapots onto it throughout and I think there probably is a mild stain (but hard to spot because we have a speckled brown/grey/black finish). Tumeric/curry is easily wiped off.

We have Tristone which is a composite like Corian, just not as well known. It is wearing very well. You can put hot pans straight onto it, etc. Ours is a large, shaped island top.

Thanks everyone. Having read these posts I realise Corian or Silestone is probably not the solution. I naively assumed they would be cheaper than natural stone but that doesn’t seem to be the case. The flat is a student rental, although I am considering re marketing to professional sharers/ couple. 12/12.5 cm solid laminate might be the way to go though in terms of look and durability, I am going to out at my local Howdens who seem to stock it . Thanks for mentioning Duropal @IamnotwhouthinkIam, also thanks to everyone who posted.

Quality laminate is definitely the way to go in a student rental. No undermounted sink, etc and try to avoid joints as water can penetrate and wreck the board under the laminate layer.

Thanks @WeAreTheHeroes good to have confirmation. I’ve been looking at Duropal and it seems Howdens also do compact laminate.