Granite VS Quartz

Transcript:

Thank you for joining us again I’m Greg Fox, as I hope you know from watching our other video blog posts on Level One; I’m the owner of Fox Granite. Today we get a question from Cynthia over in Austin on what exactly is quartz in relation to granite. And the answer is very simple. Quartz is a man-made product that’s made in the United States by a handful of suppliers that takes quartz that has been mined in Brazil mainly, so it’s a natural product, and then it’s made, mixed with concrete to bind it together, and then polished out.

So it looks like a slab of granite, it feels like it’s 100% natural, but it’s truly just like a concrete polymer and quartz fused together. The quartz is that little fleck that’s shiny on the surface that you see, that’s what the quartz is. Everything else is filled in to create the structure for it.
It’s very dense compared to granite. Some people think that it’s impossible to stain because all the manufacturers like CaesarStone, Silestone, LG Viatera, for a few, really push the marketing that it’s impervious to staining. They give you a 15-year manufacturer’s warranty on it.

The truth is it’s pretty darned close to granite, as far as a Level One. So I wouldn’t buy quartz just because I wanted maintenance-free. Nothing is maintenance-free. I’ve seen quartz stain before. I would buy quartz because I want the look of it. And the look of quartz that people are kind of using it mainly for as far as interior decorators are the European look, painted cabinets, really sleek, really modern, really contemporary. Not to say if you have a traditional house you can’t use it, but when it’s costing significantly more than granite, perhaps it’s not worth it to you.
So think about quartz as being the look I want to create rather than just being about OK, it’s going to be maintenance-free. I’m never going to stain it. Well, the truth is almost no one stains granite to begin with.

So although you want to take care of your granite, it is natural-forming 100%, meaning you cut the rock out of the quarry, and all they do is polish it. Whereas quartz you mine a mineral and then fuse it together with concrete. You still want to take care of your granite, but you don’t have to worry about it. Again, my main objective of this blog is buy quartz because of the way it looks and the look you want to create. Don’t be afraid of granite. But it is a great product. There’s no question about it.

I hope that answers your question. If you have any more questions on quartz in detail and specifically, a certain topic, just send it via email again, and we will get to it and come back and answer it. So thanks again. I’m Greg Fox. I hope this helped you out.