Caesarstone worktops

ritani

Hi,
I have been looking at silestone worktops for a new kitchen and have found lots of useful information from past threads - thank you. On visiting my local supplier today, they introduced me to caesarstone. The sales guy said it was just as good as silestone but much cheaper, the only difference was no 10 yr guarantee.
Are there any MSEers out there who have experience with it and may be able to give me some advice? Apologies if this is covered in another thread, a quick search did not uncover anything.
Many thanks

majjie

Silestone is the market leader in quartz composite worktops, they do lots of advertising and promotions, bring out new colours regularly ... and theirs is the only worktop which includes antibacterial Microban in the mixture. They'd probably also say that their resin mixtures give a superior and stronger product.

To the lay person, though ... there's virtually no difference between the two. Silestone is made on a huge machine in Spain; Caesarstone is made on a very similar huge machine, on a kibbutz in Israel. Silestone says it's 95% quartz, Caesarstone says it's 93% quartz.

If Caesarstone do a colour that you like ... and you're not too bothered about the Microban ... I'd say go ahead with the Caesarstone.

CKdesigner

Hi

I wouldn't say that Caesarstone is much cheaper, in fact I don't think there is much difference at all. They both have 4 or 5 different price bands so if you compare a band 1 of one against a band 5 of the other there will be a difference.

One thing I would say though is that our granite company says that Silestone is better to work with, more consistent in colour and grain and slightly better quality.

More important than the brand of Quartz I would say is the quality of the fabricator.

Good luck

CK

Alan_M_2

As above.....

Bottom line is all these materials are made on a "Breton" machine. It's pretty much the only machine that does make this stuff.

The only thing that does differ is the mixtures put in it. Oh and with Silestone you're paying for part of Fernando Alonso's salary (the F1 driver)...

CK is right about the fabricator, quartz hates being dry polished, it just doesn't work very well. So these tops lend themselves to machine manufacture, which nowadays makes it more expensive than granite. But it does offer a range of colours that would never be available as natrual materials.