When it comes to updating your kitchen, countertops are one of the trickiest components to remodel. You have to consider money, time, and effort, and changing countertops can require a lot of these three things. Material is a huge factor in whether or not you should paint over them, or if they’ll need to be gutted and replaced.
Smooth wood and laminate countertops are better candidates for painting than rough stone. It’s not worth painting countertops with marble, quartz, or granite as the base. Kitchen counters are high-traffic areas that receive a lot of wear, and paint jobs can take a beating from heat, chemical cleaners, and metal utensils. Stone countertops are the best performers when selling homes for this reason.
Painting over stone isn’t a one-coat job with a bucket and brush. It takes hours to sand, deep clean, prime, paint, and seal — all for a result that isn’t guaranteed to hold up for a long time. Those Pinterest DIY countertops very well might be just as beautiful in person as they are online, but the results are often filmed recently or at a distance. You’re not going to see the white paint yellowing or all the nicks and scratches after a decade. There’s always the option to redo it, but that’s time, effort, and money spent all over again. For the DIY wizards who do it for the love of the game: do what brings you joy and retouch to your heart’s content.
When you don’t like your kitchen’s stone countertops
There are two common reasons people want to change their stone countertops, and the first is that they tolerated the counters when buying the house, but never really liked the look. Unless you’re working with a surface you find downright ugly, it’s possible to change other parts of the kitchen to fit the countertops. White stone suits dark neutrals or cool, lighter cabinet hues. Granite is multicolored with grays and oranges, and cabinets tend to look best if they’re one of the hues in the countertop. Applying color theory to the walls, furniture, and decorations can change your entire countertop perception. It’s a lot easier to paint walls and wood than to cover stone to match them.
The other most common reason people want to change their stone countertop is because they’ve already fancied up the kitchen and now want the countertops to match the vision. To get a result worthy of the hard work you put into the space, it might save some heartbreak to put in new countertops. Quartz and granite are the most reliable countertop materials, and they come in all sorts of patterns and colors. Choose a stone that suits your kitchen for a space that can handle the cooking and DIY-ing of everyone in your home for years to come.
