How quartzite forms
Quartzite begins as sandstone. Heat and pressure over geological time fuse the sand grains together and recrystallise them into an interlocking mass of quartz, which is what gives the finished stone its hardness. Almost every slab here is described in those terms, because the quartz content is the whole point of the material.
That origin also explains the color. Sandstone picks up whatever minerals were present when it formed, and the metamorphosis preserves them, so quartzite arrives in greens, blues, grays, blacks and whites depending on what was in the sand. Nothing else in our stone catalog spreads across the spectrum like this.
Quartzite slab colors
No single color dominates. Green is the largest group, with white, gray and blue close behind it and black and beige not far back. Compare that with our marble, where white accounts for the largest share by a wide margin, and the difference in character is obvious before any other consideration.
Blue and green are thin on the ground elsewhere in our stone: quartzite supplies most of both. If a room needs a colored stone, not a neutral one, the blue and green collections gather what is available across materials.
Hardness against marble
Quartz is one of the hardest common minerals, several steps above the calcite that marble is made of. In a kitchen that shows up in two ways: the surface resists scratching from the things that meet a countertop, and it is far less reactive to acid than marble is.
The descriptions are careful about the second point and so is this page: quartzite resists etching considerably better than marble, rather than being immune to it, and the slabs are still sold with a sealing regime. What a lemon or a splash of wine does to a polished marble surface it does not do here, but the stone is porous rock and is treated accordingly.
Slab thickness: 2 cm and 3 cm
The great majority of these slabs are 3 cm, with a much smaller group at 2 cm. White marble by contrast is split almost evenly between the two, and the difference says what each material is bought for: 3 cm is the kitchen work surface thickness, carrying itself across a span and presenting an edge that reads as solid stone.
Nearly every slab here is described for countertop use. Quartzite is not usually the choice for a decorative wall or a fireplace surround, not because it cannot do the job but because the reasons to pay for its hardness are all in a kitchen.
Quartzite slab finishes
Polished covers most of the range, with honed, textured and leathered behind it. On a hard stone the polish holds up better than it does on marble, since the surface it sits on is less easily marked.
Leathered and textured finishes both appear in this range, and they change the surface: a lightly textured face disguises fingerprints and water marks on a dark stone in a way a polish cannot, which matters on the blacks and deep greens that quartzite does particularly well.
Quartzite sold as marble
Quartzite and marble are sold side by side in the same yards and can look remarkably alike, particularly in the whites and grays. They are not alike in use, and the difference is not something a photograph settles.
The reliable question to ask about any pale veined slab is what the stone actually is and how it behaves with acid. A supplier who knows the material answers without hesitating. The stones in this collection are all identified as quartzite, and their descriptions consistently draw the comparison with marble instead of leaving it open, which is the behavior to expect.
Slab sizes and lots
The size field reads Random on all of them, because a slab is sawn from a quarried block at whatever dimensions the block allowed. Each piece is measured individually, and the one photographed is the one that arrives.
That makes matching a question to settle early. Slabs cut in sequence from one block resemble each other closely; slabs from different blocks of the same stone can differ noticeably. The stone slab page has the detail on how lots, thickness and fabrication work across every material.
