We almost went with Caesarstone's Raw Concrete, I loved the large sample we had. But after reading this thread and the comment above on how everything shows on it, I held it against the light, and ughh.. right away I saw that the whole surface was indeed smudged and full of fingerprints. It took several attempts with a wet rag and dish soap to get it cleaned up, yet very visible smears stubbornly remained. We have a long run of cabs with windows above, replicating this type of light and I started questioning our choice.
We searched for alternatives, considered Dekton and Laminam but finally found a fabricator that showed us Diresco quartz in velvet finish, a surface that's somewhere between honed and polished. My sample did not show fingerprints easily, no smudges and streaks after cleaning off grease, I couldn't scratch it, nothing stained it, and permanent marker came off with some rubbing alcohol, so we went with it. We had it installed a couple of days ago, and so far we absolutely love it, Ours is a uniform neutral grey called Medium Beach. The finish seems to me closer to honed than to polished, but with a soft shine, visible only at certain angles, hard to describe. Close-up, or from above it looks honed.
I've been told by our fabricator that Diresco is manufactured in Belgium and uses less resin than Caesarstone, Silestone and Cambria.
Once things get less crazy-busy around our house, I'll post some pics.
Q
light hint blue/green soapstone
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