Thanks for all the advice everyone.

Tothill - I love Ikea!! But ours is over an hour away. We'll have to visit and see if they install that far away, or even deliver items for someone else to install.

We have a beige pattern granite with white cabinets and stainless appliances in current house. Like it very much. Granite for us has been easy to keep up with. Moving to new house near enough to IKEA to put in a white kitchen (which I have drooled over for years but shipping (not delivery) for IKEA is very expensive. Going with Quartz this time. Son near new house has Quartz and it is very easy to maintain. I dropped spaghetti sauce on it and didn't notice til it dried. Just a damp paper towel cleaned it up with no streaking. It is white with some gray and called nougat. Our will be a little different.

We had dark blue quartz countertops with hickory cabinets and red oak flooring. No way did I want the care of granite and no way did I want more brown or black in the same room. So we went with quartz. It was wonderful to care for and hot pots could be set on it without any damage. (I never tried that, though.) The sparkles of the light reflecting on the quartz was amazing...loved it. Now have granite and would love to switch to quartz again.

I would love to have quartz coumter tops. the don't need treating like granite ones do and they are stain resistant.

Did a remodel last year. Granite countertops, white and wood cupboards, stainless appliances. Well, we wood paneled the dishwasher fronts.. I love it. Did a beautiful piece with lots of colors from nature (brown, black, some whites, golds) veining all through it as a full slab on the island. Then did black honed on the rest of counters. The black does water spot but I just TRY to clean up after myself! (Got some NORWEX microfiber rags. Very helpful with spots and streaking.) It's not that super shiny kind. The honed tones it down. I went granite over quartz as all the Quartz is the same to me? Looks like little dots of color? Or something.? I like the natural veined look over the manufactured look I saw with the Quartz. I REALLY wanted soapstone!!! Check that out. Very antibiotic. And beautiful! But, only comes black with occasionally a vein of Green. Good luck with your remodel. I LOVE LOVE LOVE mine and don't know if I could do it again. Lived out of a back bedroom "temporary kitchen" for 6 months and was stressful.. Get on HOUZZ and start looking.

I put High Definition laminate in my kitchen. I have a large 6 x 8 island and had the corners trimmed with a rounded edge. It is the first thing people comment on in my new kitchen - Is this marble? It cost about 1/3 what granite or quartz would have but is as beautiful. It has a finish on it that is extremely durable. I may not want the same countertop 15 years from now and having the laminate will allow a change if I wish.

Thanks for all the comments so far. Very informative!!

I wonder about something. It seems perhaps the darker colors show the water spots more than the lighter colors? For those of you who say you don't have to dry your counters after washing them, do you have lighter colors by any chance? Seems the black is particularly fussy??

We recently put in granite and love it. I didn't want anything in the brown tones, so we chose a granite named Steel Rock. It's mostly black with flecks of gray in it. It is stunning. I wipe it down, but don't need to dry it, but I often do, because it's still so new to me (like a man lovingly washing and buffing his new car repeatedly.) We looked at quartz, which was significantly more expensive (about 1/3 again as much) but didn't like that most of it had glittery sparkles in it. We thought that was a fad, and wanted the timeless beauty of natural stone. I will say that a friend sent me photos of the high gloss black countertops in a condo they rented cautioning me against all black high gloss. The water spots WERE terrible.

Every once in a while when I do an open house, I go in ahead of time and wipe down the countertops if need be. I just use a damp warm cloth and dry with a towel afterward. I do this in my home. Warning to those who renovate/remodel their homes for resale. Get with a realtor to compare your home with others. Putting in expensive stone countertops may really improve your sentimental value and make your home look stunning but depending on the neighborhood market, may not be the profit maker you hope to have on your home to sell in the future. Like I said depending on the market for the neighborhood.

I have quartz and I love it. Its a little more care but worth it I think...I use a special granite cleaner and reseal it about twice a year.