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Glass vs. Marble Countertops

It’s finally time to replace your kitchen countertops and you couldn’t be more excited. You’re long since overdue for an upgraded kitchen, and you’ve had a lot of fun researching all your material options.

Unfortunately, you haven’t gotten much further than researching. You think you’d like a glass countertop but you’re also thinking about marble, and you just can’t decide. Which is the better option?

Let’s help you make up your mind in today’s post!

First, let’s compare the hardness of marble and glass. To do this, we only need to look at the Mohs Hardness Scale, which dictates how hard materials and minerals are.

Marble is ranked with limestone and travertine at a 2 or 3. The Mohs scale starts at 1 and goes through 10, so a score of 2 or 3 is not very hard at all.

Glass has a ranking of 5.5 to 7 on the Mohs scale, which is significantly harder than marble. Not only that, but glass is harder than apatite, fluorite, calcite, gypsum, and talc.

As for the durability of these two countertop materials, that depends on the type of marble. Marble comes in all sorts of colors, from green to brown, blue, red, cream, gray, and black. Most types of marble don’t need to be resealed, but white marble does.

This means that every couple of years, you’ll have to pay a team of technicians to come out and reseal your counter so it stays together. That’s expensive and inconvenient.

Glass requires no resealing. It can be just as durable as marble, if not more so. You don’t have to worry about staining a glass countertop, as it’s stain-proof.

It takes a lot of force and–to be honest–misuse to crack a glass countertop. That’s not to say it’s impossible, but through everyday usage, it’s not something you’re going to have to worry about.

We have to compare costs as well, as that’s something that’s naturally going to come up as you compare your countertop options.

Marble is one of the most expensive countertop materials. Even granite, which is not considered cheap by any stretch of the imagination, costs less than marble. You could easily end up spending thousands of dollars on the countertop alone.

That’s before you factor in installation and other fees. Ouch!

A glass countertop is a much more cost-effective option.

What about cleaning your counter? That’s something you’ll have to do all the time.

Well, while you can keep a marble counter tidy with dish soap and water, you have to use a marble cleaner from time to time too. That will require you to go out and buy this specialized cleaner unless you just so happen to have some marble cleaner lying around.

You can keep a glass counter looking fresh by cleaning it with nothing more than soap, water, and a soft microfiber cloth.

While it’s ultimately your choice which countertop material you choose, glass counters are durable, appealing, easy to clean, and less costly than marble.