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Vanity bathroom tops

Vanity bathroom tops may seem like a marginal component of your bathroom, but in reality they have a drastic effect on the overall look and feel of the room. A well chosen top will bring life and vibrancy to the room, whereas a poorly designed one can suck the vitality right out of the space. It’s important when choosing a vanity style to have an end goal for the design of the room.

The end goal is particularly important when you start to compare specific models of vanity bathroom tops against one another. Is the speckled grey granite a better choice than the black veined marble? Is the glass sink sitting above counter level a good choice, or is a sunken stainless steel bowl a better option? These things are not questions that have a right answer or a wrong answer; rather they are things that tie into your overall goals for the room. So before shopping for a vanity top, ask yourself a few questions. What style am I going for? This can be the single most important question to ask, do you want a post modern bathroom that questions assumptions? Do you want an elegant imperial bathroom, or a Victorian styled one? Again, there are no wrong answers to this question, what you choose will depend on what you like best.

Once you know the answer, you can start picking out things such as color schemes and basic design elements. Once you know the basic design elements of your bathroom, it becomes meaningful to discuss different vanity bathroom top styles. For instance you could go minimalist with a Greek column supporting a tinted glass bowl. That decision would not make any sense if you were designing a Victorian bathroom with a raised tub; but it would fit perfectly with a bathroom that features large built in tub within a tile inset. Some bathroom vanities will come complete with top, such as the column mentioned in the previous paragraph. Other vanities will require you to pick out a separate top and sink combination. These vanities offer you a larger degree of control over exactly how your bathroom will look.

There are several popular materials that can be used for a bathroom vanity top. Stone is an ever present and continually popular medium. Granite offers a low maintenance, high class option, while marble is the crème de la crème. Marble is expensive, and harder to maintain than granite, but if you want a luxurious bathroom, it is an option. If neither of these appeals to you, you can go exotic with limestone. Since limestone is naturally formed in the presence of water, it is important to seal these tops, but the look you get from limestone is truly one of a kind.

If you’d prefer a man made material, you can always go with a quartz based vanity top. The advantage of a fabricated vanity top is that you can get the precise shade, coloring, and sparkle that you want, with literally thousands of shades available. Depending on the manufacturer and quality of material you choose, these can be as expensive as granite, but the quality and durability is equivalent, so that is to be expected.

Of course, if you are looking for economy first and foremost, you should be looking for a laminate bathroom vanity top. These are particle board that is covered in a plastic, waterproof surface. The surface can be made to look like just about any material you desire, but it will only be skin deep, and subject to scratching. The durability of these tops is somewhat less than that of a stone or quartz top, but they will be much less expensive to compensate.

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