June 9, 2026

For most kitchens, engineered quartz is the sensible default, solid timber is the warmest and the most forgiving to repair, and natural stone is the most beautiful and the most demanding. Budget roughly £2,200 for solid oak, £3,200 for quartz, £3,800 for travertine and £5,200 for lava stone on a typical medium kitchen.

Here is how each one actually behaves once you are living with it.

Solid timber

From around £2,200. Warm, quiet under a knife, and the only surface on this list you can sand back and refinish yourself.

It moves with humidity, marks with standing water, and needs re-oiling roughly every eighteen months, which takes an afternoon. If you accept the maintenance it will outlast everything else here, because it can always be brought back.

Not our first choice immediately around a sink unless you are diligent about wiping down.

Engineered quartz

From around £3,200. Non-porous, so nothing stains, and consistent from slab to slab so there are no surprises between the sample and the delivery.

It is harder than natural stone and effectively maintenance free. The trade-offs are that it can scorch under a hot pan, it cannot be refinished if it does, and the consistency that makes it reliable also makes it look manufactured next to real stone.

Travertine

From around £3,800. Warm, characterful, filled and honed. Every slab is different, which is the appeal.

It is porous and needs sealing, and it will etch if you leave lemon juice or wine on it overnight. Ours is filled and sealed before it leaves the workshop, and it wants resealing every couple of years.

Choose it if you like a surface that shows its life. Avoid it if a mark would bother you.

Lava stone

From around £5,200. Quarried volcanic stone, enamelled at high temperature. Effectively indestructible, heat proof, acid proof, and available in colours nothing else offers.

It is the most expensive option and the one we specify when someone wants a surface they will never have to think about. The enamel is glass, so it is genuinely inert.

What we would put in our own house

Quartz on the working run around the sink and hob, because that is where the wear happens and it simply does not care. Solid timber on an island or a peninsula, because that is where people sit and touch it and warmth matters more than resilience.

Mixing two materials in one kitchen is not a compromise, it is usually the right answer, and it costs less than doing the whole thing in the expensive one.

One practical point

Whatever you choose, the join positions matter more than most people realise. Ask where the seams will fall before you sign off. A seam in the middle of the run behind a hob looks like an accident. A seam at a corner looks deliberate.