Natural Quartzite and Engineered Quartz What’s the Difference?

Engineered quartz and natural quartzite are both popular choices for countertops, backsplashes, bathrooms, and more. Their names are similar, and are sometimes (incorrectly) used interchangeably. But even aside from the names, there’s a lot of confusion about these materials.

Here’s a quick and handy reference for understanding both engineered quartz and quartzite: where they come from, what they’re made of, and how they differ.

Quartzite is a natural stone.

Quartzite is 100% natural and comes directly from the earth. Quartzite has formed in locations all around the planet and the most well-known quartzite quarries are in Brazil. Quartzite is also quarried in the United States, Sweden, Canada, Norway, India, and Italy, among other locales. Dramatic settings like the Medicine Bow Mountains in Wyoming show off quartzite in its natural habitat, where an impressive massif of white quartzite rises above the surrounding terrain.

Engineered quartz is manmade.

Even though the name “quartz” refers to a natural mineral, engineered quartz (sometimes also called “engineered stone”) is a manufactured product. It’s made from quartz particles bonded together with resin, pigments, and other ingredients. Manufactured quartz is made in factories in the United States, Europe, and Asia, among other locations.

Grey Quartz Water Flow Natural Stone Paneling

Natural quartzite contains minerals, and nothing else.

All quartzites are made of 100% minerals, and are purely a product of nature. Quartz (the mineral) is the main ingredient in all quartzites, and some types of quartzite contain smaller amounts of other minerals that give the stone color and character. The diverse options in aesthetics are impressive—and all from the earth. So if you like calm monochrome, nature provides that. If wild streaks of color tug on your heart, nature’s got you covered.

Engineered quartz contains minerals, polyester, styrene, pigments, and tert-Butyl peroxybenzoate.

The exact blend of ingredients in engineered quartz varies by brand and color, and manufacturers tout the high percentage of minerals in their slabs. The oft-cited statistic is that manufactured quartz contains 93% mineral quartz. But there are two caveats. First, 93% is the maximum, and actual quartz content can be much lower. Secondly, that percentage is measured by weight, not volume. A particle of quartz weighs a lot more than a particle of resin. So if you want to know how much of a countertop surface is made of quartz, then you need to measure the ingredients by volume, not weight. Based on proportions of materials in PentalQuartz, for example, the product is around 74% mineral quartz when measured by volume, even though it’s 88% quartz by weight.

Quartzite is made from geologic processes, over millions of years.

Some people (me included!) love the idea of having a slice of geologic time in their home or office. Every natural stone is an expression of all of the time and events that shaped it. Each quartzite has its own life story, but many were deposited as beach sand, and then buried and compressed into solid rock to make sandstone. Then the stone was pushed deeper into Earth’s crust where it was further and compressed and heated into a metamorphic rock. During metamorphism, quartzite experiences temperatures somewhere between 800° and 3000° F, and pressures of at least 40,000 pounds per square inch (in metric units, that’s 400° to 1600° C and 300 MPa), all over the course of millions of years.

Natural quartzites are not all alike. There is variation in how deeply they were buried and for how long, and what types of conditions they endured. Because of this, some quartzites are somewhat porous (like Macaubus), while others are tightly bonded together (like Marine Blue, Taj Mahal, or Fusion). For an explanation of the different members of the quartzite family, check out A Deep Dive Into the Properties of Quartzite.