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In my kitchen, I have a cultured granite sink. The style is pretty standard - looks just like most stainless steel types. It is my absolute favorite item in the house, since despite my husband's and kids' best efforts, it has sustained no visible damage since we installed it.
The sinks in my bathrooms on the other hand, are cultured marble. One is burnt and gouged. The other is cracked along the bottom. Both look permanently dirty. I would like to replace them with something similar to what I have in the kitchen, but cannot find anything close. There are lots of granite countertops available, but it looks like you've still got to go with a more standard material for the actual sink.
I have no idea what you mean by cultured granite, maybe you could post a picture so we can see what you mean? I wonder if it's maybe Corian or a quartz solid surface material, you can get sinks made of those materials but with real stone you generally can't (I'm sure it's possible, but probably prohibitively expensive). The quartz solid surface materials look more like granite than Corian does. Some brand names are Zodiaq, Cambria, and Caesarstone (there are probably others as well, but if you google those three you'll see some pics so you can see if that's the same thing)
I don't really know exactly what cultured granite is either. I've always heard that you cannot make a curved sink out of stone. That is what it said on the box, though. I don't know much more about the sink, because at the time we built our house, my husband was a carpet installer. He did a lot of work on builder's models and we were able to get much of the materials for our house at great prices when the builders changed their mind about materials.
Well, just like cultured marble isn't marble, cultured granite wouldn't be granite either, it would be a synthetic material made to look like granite. But I'd never heard of anything called cultured granite so I wasn't sure what it was. I'm still not sure exactly what it is from your picture, but it looks like it's similar to solid surface. If you're replacing the vanity and the sink, if you go with one of the solid surface options I mentioned above you can get the vanity and sink all made out of the same material so the sink's really just part of the vanity, or I think you can buy sinks made out of Corian separately if you were planning to just replace the sink.
Does today's Corian hold up well? I like the look, but I used to work in retail management. We used Corian for all of the service counters at a new store and they really did not wear all that well. This was a long time ago, however (15-16 years) and I have heard that Corian is now much improved.
I have no idea, it's not a surface that I have in my house or ever considered. I haven't seen anyone around here complaining about theirs not holding up so I suspect it should be fine though, if there were major issues with it someone would be posting about it.
I have the same type sink in my kitchen. I love it! When I can, I clean it and polish with a product from lowes/publix. I would think lowes/home depot would have special order from the company that made your kitchen sink. Go on line and look up the company, perhapes they have a bathroom line of products. Good luck. Marla
How did the search go? Did you find just what you were looking for?
I've got the same material, that black "cultured granite" with tiny reflective flecks for depth, in my kitchen sink, too. I'm very happy with it. I did a little looking around, and can't find anything quite the same in bathroom sinks, either. There are other "cultured granite" integral sinks, but they're all a little different. Swanstone has some nice-looking ones, but I've only seen light colors. The Swanstone sink in our laundry/mudroom stains awfully easily. It wasn't a good choice.
I've had quartz aggregate in my kitchen for 4.5 yrs now, and I love it! No fuss-- just wipe it clean. We put Corian (somewhat granite-y looking speckled white/black/gray counter, very light gray, almost-white integral sink) in the master bath over 20 yrs ago (yikes!) and it's still in good shape. It doesn't have any stains or serious scratches. It gets regular use, but nowhere near the sort of rough use that a kitcen or store service counter would get.
I have corian in my kitchen and no problems at all. If it does get scratched up you can just wet sand it. I have a black with white specs in it so i had a non gloss finish put on it. Looks great and hides scratches. Corian is not something I would want to put a high gloss finish on. Basically the finish is dependent on how fine you want to sand it.
I also bought from Lowe's their cheaper resin product for a bathroom sink and counter top. One piece and it is holding up well, wish I could remember the name of it right now.
