Many homeowners have quartz manmade composite kitchen worktops these days. These ones are the Carrara marble quartz variety and look very much like natural marble. In fact the customer told me that they where marble and I only realised they weren’t when the polishing seemed to be going funny at first. At this point I switched the pads and tweaked the polishing process to make these quartz worktops look fantastic!
Main differences between Carrara quartz and natural marble worktops
Due to the resins in the engineered quartz the material is much less absorbent. This is a very good thing as it means that any damage or etching occurs mostly on the surface and is easy to polish out. Engineered quartz is softer and therefore scratches more easily and the ones which I have restored have often had deep scratches that were too deep to be polished out. This is usually not the case with natural marble as scratches are usually not that bad.
Heat is a problem with engineered quartz as the resins will melt and be disturbed. This can cause issues that go quite deep into the material and may not be able to be polished out properly. It is therefore very important to use coasters an trays on your Carrara quartz kitchen work surfaces.
