Last updated on April 19th, 2022 at 07:37 am
Best Sink Options for Kitchen Glass Countertops.
When the choosing the best sinks for your Kitchen Glass Countertops, we recommend you discuss with us to ensure long-term success. With a Glass High Bar, its easy since you do not see down into the kitchen utensils. For countertop height kitchen and bath surfaces, we recommend back painting the glass to an opaque status. You can also use laminates atop your cabinetry…BUT…we have discovered that little tiny bugs are attracted to the LED lighting…and make their way towards the lights…and unfortunately their little carcasses pepper the top of the laminate and are un-attractive and difficult to remove. Painting the back of the glass is very much preferred.
With under-mounted sinks there will always be a large gap to fill between the textured glass and the top of the sink rim. Without back paint, the glass will show the silicone seam…not pretty!
We present 2 beautiful options for your kitchen glass countertops. They are:
Kohler Vault Apron-Front Sink
Ruvati Top-Mounted Bar Sink
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Beautiful, well made, heavy gauge stainless steel, come in a variety of sizes, and are reasonably priced
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Self-Trimming and very simple to install…which many apron front sinks are NOT.
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Best sinks to protect the kitchen glass countertops against breakage or chipping.
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Best sinks contemporary and modern kitchen designs
Top-mounted and Apron-front sinks solve a tricky issue with glass countertops that under-mount sinks do not. They protect your glass from abuse!
Under-mounting sinks on glass counters leads to a very time-consuming installation process…which is why we typically do not to recommend under-mounted sinks for textured glass countertops.
A simple, elegant solution involves the use of Kohler Vault Apron Front Sink or Ruvati Top-Mounted Bar Sink
Installation of these sinks is easy and creates very clean lines. Kohler has great “how-to” videos on their site that walks you through the process. It takes less than 30 minutes to install, and can be done by anyone.
As you can see it eliminates the front countertop…this is SMART! Apron-front sinks also solve a much more critical issue: The front edge of most sinks is a thin countertop piece. Do the math…if a typical cabinet box is 24” deep, the countertop is normally 25.5” deep. If the sink is 20” deep, this leaves only 5″ of countertop…divided by two for front/rear leaves only a fragile 2.5” wide countertop piece in the front and rear of the sink. And the rear piece will be drilled for a 1.375″ faucet hole, and maybe air-switches, soap dispensers, etc. Not good. Cabinet fronts are usually nothing more than a non-structural decorative trim element. Disaster looms if you should press down too hard on the front countertop piece. The counter will crack and need to be replaced with a matching color/pattern. Apron sinks are also much better at taking the impact from pots/pans reducing the risk of chipping an exposed glass surface on the front.
We like these sinks so much I installed them in my own home, and suggest that they be given your highest consideration when shopping for sinks for your kitchen glass countertops.
When using LED’s along the backside of the glass, any sink is going to prevent the light from illuminating the front glass piece…creating a dark piece of glass. By using a Kohler Vault apron-front sink we eliminate that imperfect situation. We can also place an LED around the perimeter of these sinks to cast lighting outward, eliminating dark spots. In some island pieces, this may be the ONLY lighting option available, and is a simple, elegant solution.
For glass countertops with bar sinks the Ruvati Top-Mounted Bar Sink is perfect.
When using these sinks in the middle of our glass countertops, they allow us plenty of room to have structurally thick pieces fore and aft. This is critical to glass countertops in busy homes. We use a technique of adding an additional LED and controller to the front of the sink and adjust the lighting brightness so that it is very close to the brightness of the rear LED.
With our Bluetooth controlled LED strips, this is a very simple operation, and creates a visually seamless look where sinks must be integrated into the glass countertop. See below from 2 of our installations
I appreciate your time reviewing these sink options for glass countertops. I hope that our vast experience with both Ruvati and Kohler has assisted you in your decision making process.
Jeff Downing (813) 784 5211 Jeff@DowningDesigns.com