Selection - Kitchen Sink

When building a house, one does not usually spend a lot of time choosing a kitchen sink. Builders will generally provide you with two options: inset or bottom-mount. If you are building a house of the appropriate style, they may provide the option of a butler/farmhouse sink.

If you want something other than what is included in your builder’s standard range, an entire world of sink options awaits you.

Even when deviating from the standard range, most people I know will still choose a stainless-steel sink. There are numerous brands and styles (square, round, one drainer, two drainer, etc.) and configurations (1 bowl, 1 + ¾ bowl, etc.) which range in price from only a few hundred dollars to well over one thousand.

When you start looking at the upper bracket of stainless steel sinks, it may be worth looking past the brand name, such as Oliveri and Franke, and considering the materials used to construct the sink.



Geo black composite sink from Sink Warehouse

Sinks come in a wide variety of materials including copper, ceramic, granite, as well as granite/quartz composites. There are various pros and cons for each material. I do recommend that you do your research, and if possible talk to people, in person or online, who have the same style of sink that you are considering.

For example, a friend of mine has a stone butler/farmhouse sink. Whilst she loves the look of it, she hates the fact that her washing up water is always cold, because the cold stone has taken the heat out of it.

Our current kitchen has a stainless steel sink. I have no doubt that it is a cheap sink, but for such a young sink (approx. 2 years old), I would not have expected it have more scratches than mum’s twenty year old sink!

This experience has put us off buying a stainless steel sinks, especially when the options that suited our décor were in the upper price bracket. It was purely by accident that I discovered the world of composite kitchen sinks.

Whilst searching for a freestanding bath, I wandered into the Sink Warehouse in Osborne Park. Their bath selections were on the small side; however, I was pleased to see that they had some non-standard kitchen sink options on display, namely ceramic and composite.



White and Beige Korona composite sinks
from Sink Warehouse 

 For those of us who like something a little bit different, composite sinks provide a refreshing change, because they come in a wide variety of colours including white, beige, chocolate, grey, and black.

There are number of companies who sell composite sinks. These include, but are not limited to, Franke (Mythos, Kubus), Astracast (Geo, Korona), Abey (Schock). If you look around boutique stores such as The Stone Super Store, you may find that they import a range of composite sinks that would not otherwise be available through the larger chains.

Although composite sinks are becoming more popular, you may have trouble viewing them, so it pays to do your research online and contact retailers in your area to see if they have one on display.

As discussed in a previous post, you will not always be able to find a retailer who has the item you are looking for on display. We chose a !black Schock sink by Abey. Even though we are able to purchase this sink through a number of large retail chains, none of the outlets in our area had one on display, or were able to tell us who would.

Thankfully, the Abey showroom is in our area and we were able to see the sink. It is stunning. I think this is going to look absolutely smashing with our colour scheme!


Those who have a composite sink, please leave a comment and let me know what you think of it