How to Read a Stone Slab Before You Buy It

Samples and brochure photographs are a guide to the family, not the slab. Natural stone varies enormously within a single quarry, so insist on viewing and reserving the specific slabs that will be cut for your kitchen.

Ask the yard to chalk or digitally overlay your worktop shapes on the slab. This is how you control where a dramatic vein lands, whether it runs off the island edge, and how book-matched pieces will meet at a join.

Look along the slab at a low angle in good light for hairline fissures, resin fills and pitting. Some fills are normal and structurally fine; a fissure crossing a cut-out for a sink or hob is not, because that is where the slab will fail.

Confirm the thickness, the finish and who keeps the offcut. Offcuts are useful for a matching splashback, a shelf or a future repair, and they are worth agreeing on before fabrication rather than after.