Corian Countertops
23 July 2010
“Lighting the Way”
I have said many times in these blogs that the worst thing a person can do with a major kitchen remodeling is to go with whatever is “hot,” because anything hot tends to cool, and this is especially so with fashion fads. Colors and materials come and go, according to the tastes of the moment, but a kitchen remodeling that has cost forty thousand dollars or more is really pretty much the news for as long as one owns one’s home. I cannot afford to remodel my kitchen every time someone declares it obsolete, and I doubt that you can either.
But the other part of declaring items in or out is that by making that purely arbitrary judgment which, face it, is all it really is, a lot that is good is often kicked to the curb for no good reason that I can see. Stainless steel appliances came into vogue a few years ago and soon became “all the rage.” Now a fair number of interior designers are declaring themselves forever finished with stainless steel. “Oh, that’s so yesterday.” The product itself, thou
gh, still has all the attributes that made it a popular choice in the first place.
I bring that up, though, because one of the countertops that first caught my own fancy was introduced in 1967, namely Corian by DuPont. I liked it because it was a solid surface countertop that was much thicker than the laminate countertops that had preceded it, and because of the integrated sinks. They could seal the seams in such a way that they completely disappeared, and it came in a multitude of colors. All these years later I find myself still liking the product for the same reasons, but there are more colors to choose from now! The thing with classics, though, is that they just keep on being classics.
One of the bugaboos with Corian is that you cannot put hot pots on it, and some people really have a problem with that sort of thing. The first kitchen my wife and I had came with laminate 
countertops, so we routinely put down a hot pad. Problem solved, and it became such a habit with us, that even though we have had tile countertops for close to thirty years now, we still put down hot pads whenever we take something out of the oven. So, for us, to go to a Corian surface, with its need for a hot pad, would not be a problem at all. We also did not scratch that laminate countertop for the entire five years we had it, but it is nice to know that this kind of damage is imminently repairable in a Corian countertop.
In recent years “going green” has become something of a fad, although the bulk of it, to me, is mostly lip service. How “green” are you when you rip out an old kitchen and replace it with something new? However, that said, it is certainly possible to mitigate the environmental damage by making more intelligent choices for the new products going in. And if the countertop is endlessly renewable, well, that wou
ld certainly do a lot to make sure that it is not replaced anytime soon. One of the reasons for a new countertop is that the old one has begun to show its age, which is one of the attributes of a Corian countertop. When it ages, as indeed everything does, it can easily be renewed to look the way it did when it was first installed. So if you never replace the countertop, that’s “green,” right?
But the other factor with a solid surface like Corian is its sheer versatility. It’s a product that can be used for anything and everything, and is often a choice of artists working in other mediums. In fact, the glorious wood turner I talked about earlier this week, Phil Stivers, made a wonderful cheese platter with a Corian center. Phil felt that it gave his product an absolutely perfect surface to use for that purpose, and added a lot of flair to the end product. And that’s pretty much how I feel about it in a kitchen.
Interestingly enough, a fair number of designers are now beginning to work with Corian, using it to make things like benches and tables and the like, but to me, it is still one of the better countertop materials going around. It’s the kind of product that I personally don’t think can go ever go out of style, simply because it always has the properties we liked about it in the first place. Because of the plethora of styles and colors that are available to the mind of modern science and a design department that has taken full advantage of this, Corian is forever on the cutting edge of kitchen design. Really, it’s a product that has, to my mind, simply transcended fads altogether and now lights the way for others to follow behind.
Joseph
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6 Responses to “Corian Countertops”
July 23rd, 2010 at 10:56 AM
Corian and other solid surfaces are nice, but in my own kitchen I wanted the natural color variations of granite. As for putting hot pots on the surface, I was told not to put hot pots directly on my granite because it could damage it.
Kat
July 23rd, 2010 at 11:29 AM
Nice post there Joseph. I am considering using a solid surface material for our guest bathroom just to see how the material works. I personally like the idea of using a thicker material like EOS which comes 30mm thick. That way I would not have the hassle of building up the edges with the help of hundreds of little clamps. I wonder if Corian comes in a 3 cm thickness?
Joe
July 23rd, 2010 at 3:20 PM
Oh, count me in for still liking Corian, I like seeing it used in new applications, colors and using interesting edges to keep things interesting.
I will admit that as a designer, seeing the same ‘ol materials from job to job, can get boring. We can get a bit jaded when someone wants a color we have installed job after job. That’s why it’s fun to see something that may have been tired and old 10 years ago have a reemergence with new colors and installation options. It keeps things interesting.
July 26th, 2010 at 5:50 AM
Thanks for using our photo’s in your blog!
July 27th, 2010 at 10:59 AM
Hi Joseph – Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the benefits and advantages of Corian® as well as some great photos from our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/corianhome! Please keep in touch and I looking forward to hearing more about your upcoming projects. Thanks – Christine from DuPont
August 2nd, 2010 at 10:09 AM
Corian is the best solid surface, there are alot of colours you can choose, you can modify corian when it damaged as a reult corian is the best solid surface for kitchen and baths..in Turkey there is a good company for dupont Corian Onur yapı http://www.corianshop.com you can visit this web site