Quartzite vs granite: which one for your kitchen?

Granite is an igneous rock: it crystallized slowly from magma, so it is made of interlocking grains of quartz, feldspar and mica. That is why granite usually looks speckled or grainy, with a pattern that repeats across the slab.

Quartzite is a metamorphic rock: sandstone that was buried and squeezed until its quartz grains fused. Because the minerals that coloured the original sand were pushed around, quartzite can show the soft, flowing veining people love in marble.

In a kitchen both resist heat and everyday scratches far better than marble does, and both usually want a sealer. Neither is maintenance free, and the trade names are loose: some slabs sold as quartzite are softer stones that only look the part.

The safest way to choose is to look at the actual slab, ask for a scratch test and an acid test, and decide how much movement you want in the pattern. We walk you through that on the real slab before anything is cut.