Not Laminate: Consumer Reports' Lowest-Rated Countertop Material Fails On Every Measure

There are genuine pros and cons to different kitchen countertop materials, but rarely do you see a definitive "don't do it," as strong as Consumer Reports' lowest-rated countertop option. The choices for your kitchen counters have proliferated in recent years, as older countertop styles like quartz have come back into fashion, and options like concrete and butcher blocks have become trendy. Consumer Reports has tested them all, doing what you can't afford to and putting different countertop materials to the test under real working kitchen conditions and beyond. There was competition at the top and the bottom, but one thing is clear: Bamboo countertops aren't up to the challenge in the kitchen.

Consumer Reports tested kitchen countertops in five different areas of performance and durability, and bamboo was atrocious in all but one. It can boast about being a sustainable, eco-friendly kitchen countertop, attractive, and anti-microbial, but it is far more fragile than any other option. Even that attractive wood look will be temporary, as Consumer Reports found bamboo countertops were terrible at resisting stains from common foods and kitchen products. They were also highly susceptible to damage from cutting and chopping with knives, certainly not ideal, and were less heat-resistant than most other materials. The bamboo tested also scored poorly with blunt damage from dropped objects, although many of the alternative countertops, including some top performers, struggled in that category. The only area in which bamboo countertops performed okay was in resisting abrasion damage, where it was merely average.

If you think that lack of quality would make bamboo countertops cheap, think again. While they aren't a high-end option, they still fall in the middle range of prices for kitchen counters, meaning they don't even have the appeal of a low-cost, low-quality choice. However, there is a much more popular kitchen counter material that you might want to avoid just as much.

While bamboo was solidly last in Consumer Reports' testing, the other material to receive a truly terrible grade was marble. It was a little better than bamboo at resisting stains and heat, but still quite bad, and was actually worse at resisting abrasions. There was nothing that it was good, or even average at. And as a more expensive option compared to many other kitchen countertop materials, marble looks like a purely aesthetic choice for people who won't actually be using their kitchens to cook much.

While Consumer Reports' two options of quartz and granite aren't exactly cheap either, there is one surface that overperformed for its cost: laminate. It finished well ahead of options like concrete, solid surface, and butcher blocks, and was particularly resistant to stains, heat, and blunt force drops. It was vulnerable to cutting damage, but still performed better than many alternatives. So if you were considering bamboo countertops as a cheaper alternative to granite and quartz, try giving the unfairly looked down upon laminate a chance instead.