How to make the seam of a Quartz counter top disappear as much as possible?

Question

We went counter top shopping this past weekend and was looking at Quartz counters. I asked about creating an L shaped counter and the rep showed me one in the showroom and I saw a seam! The counter in the showroom was a very busy style...there were colored swatches of materials throughout. Perhaps that was a hard pattern to make an 'invisible' seam.

The counters we picked was essentially a white counter with a little bit of grey and brown in it. Imagine swirling a few drops of color into white paint... Maybe this will be an easy one to hide the seam.

Anyhow, what is the technique to hide a seam? Make sure the joining compound that you use is the same color? Is there any sort of blending that we can do with the joining compound so that it blends with the left and right pieces of the counter?

Answer 1

The best way to hide the seam is to get rid of it entirely. If you already purchased the countertop, you're going to have limited options, and as said in iLikeDirt's answer, most of those options aren't to hide it, but to make it a feature.

However, concrete isn't the only way to get a seamless appearance. When we had our countertops made for the previous house, we had them cut the corner out of one continuous slab of granite, so there was no seam in the corner, and instead, a tiny, barely noticeable one in front of the sink.

If you haven't bought your countertops yet, I'd talk to the rep and see what they, or another countertop shop in your area can do about custom cuts. This will, of course, depend on your cabinet layout, and will, in all likelihood, drive the price up by a not-exactly-negligible amount.

Answer 2

The only way to truly have a seam-free countertop of that shape is to cast it out of concrete. Since you've already chosen quartz, that doesn't seam like an option.

Embrace the seam, don't hide it. It's un-hideable, so anything short of perfection (which is impossible here) will be a disappointment and you will feel bitter about your multi-thousand-dollar expenditure because you didn't get what you wanted. Instead, change your expectations and design the countertop so that the seam is proudly visible and visually attractive. A diagonal seam at the corner could look nice.