Offering a wide range of designs, Wilsonart has long been a go-to in the industry for engineered surfaces such as High Pressure Laminate, best-matched Edgebanding, Solid Surface and Adhesive products for just about any space. And in recent years, it expanded its engineered surfaces portfolio to include Quartz, providing design professionals with even more options for a variety of applications. When developing this line, the design team spent time contemplating luxury and how to create new additions that could elevate a room while also fitting into any design story. For Wilsonart design manager, Natalia Smith, the 2017 additions to the Quartz line needed to be timeless, above all, bringing the incredible durability of the material together with a tasteful array of grayscale colors that would stay luxurious and exciting over the years.
Vesuvius
Colors That Never Go Out of Style
“Luxury means a lot of different things to a lot of different people,” says Smith, who notes that gray has become an exceptionally important color to highlight in design portfolios, as its popularity increases in both residential and commercial markets. She attributes this tendency toward grayscale to the way it allows designers and consumers to have confidence in their choices. The gray palette serves as a clean chic backdrop to help personalize any room. Louder trendier elements such as fabrics or paints can always be changed to make new statements, while more permanent features like surfaces and countertops can stay in place without ever feeling dated. “White and black are classic,” says Smith. “They will never go out of style, and in fact will support the consumer’s changing taste in style for years to come.”
Empire State
Marrara
With this idea in mind, Smith and her team created a total of eight brand-new designs for the Wilsonart Quartz Collection. Each design alters the classic grayscale with influences from other materials like marble, concrete and reflective metals. Standout results include the bright white Lazio and the pristine Marrara, which resembles Carrara marble; Vesuvius, which blends solid black quartz with white and glass specks; and Empire State or Manhattan, which resemble concrete in light and dark gray designs with white and charcoal features. Other variations mix semi-translucence with taupe and gray veining like Tellaro. A statuary marble design that can also come with a bookmatched companion, like Lucca, presents new surface options that certainly function as timeless backdrops but also offer gorgeous details to catch the eye on closer inspection.
Manhattan
Materials to Last Just as Long
Smith’s reflections on what really helps to make a space feel luxurious weren’t limited to colors and changing trends Wilsonart also imbued the new Quartz Collection with its practicality, selecting one of the most durable and easy-to-maintain materials possible. “The luxury of time is common across all market segments,” says Smith. “If you can design beauty, time savings and durability into an interior, you’ve just elevated the playing field.” While popular materials like white marble inspired the appearance of some of these new quartz designs, in practice, those materials can be susceptible to damage from items as common as lemon juice or red wine.
Lucca
Lazio
Wilsonart customers benefit from the luxury of time as well as extraordinary design, as their Quartz line possesses a number of key performance benefits that ensure it is completely stain- and scratch-resistant and never requires sealing, unlike natural stone. High-quality quartz is a very hard, nonporous material. Difficult to chip, even over many years, the surfaces themselves are as timeless as Wilsonart’s beautiful designs. All designs have also achieved NSF and UL GREENGUARD GOLD certifications, ensuring they have low VOC emissions and are completely safe for use in commercial operations that involve food contact. What’s more, quartz surfaces are also Kosher, ensuring that the surfaces are certified to work in a variety of environments without any extra processes or work. Or, as Smith simply puts it, “Quartz can give you the look without any of the worries.”
Tellaro
Surfaces That Elevate Any Room
Beyond kitchens, quartz has already found uses as tabletops for dining and conference rooms throughout new residential and commercial projects. High-touch areas like bathrooms have easily integrated quartz into vanities with custom fabricated sinks, and businesses have crafted sleek reception desks either entirely in a quartz design or with a single vertical element to provide a striking visual. In residences wanting something similar, designers have been able to elevate particular rooms by adding a feature wall to show off the metallic reflectivity of designs like Versailles.
Versailles
“The new release of Wilsonart Quartz Designs offer a blank canvas to the consumer and designer supporting their design goals with superior style and performance,” says Smith. And quartz canvases can certainly support any goal with their versatility and durability from both a practical and visual perspective. “Because the new designs are within a grayscale, the coordination possibilities are broad while remaining timeless.”
