One of the common misunderstandings where glass splashbacks for kitchens are concerned is that they are delicate or fragile. When you mention the idea of glass worktops or glass splashbacks people often tend to assume that whilst they may look very stylish, with a funky, contemporary look that’s very appealing and very popular at the moment, on a practical level they’re not ideal.
Nothing could be further from the truth, and in this article we’ll look at exactly why it is that glass worktops and splashbacks for kitchens or bathrooms represent the ideal solution, not just as far as their looks and style is concerned, but from a very practical point of view.
You may have children, perhaps children who enjoy banging toy cars on worktops, or you may do a lot of heavy cooking, with sharp knives, acidic ingredients and boiling pans, and it might well be fair to say that glass chopping board a huge number of people will consider glass totally unsuitable for such an environment. Yet let’s look at a few facts, which will reveal just how odd such an assumption is.
First of all, let’s think about your car. Your car has a windscreen that’s made of glass. Not just that, but the glass is considerably thinner than the glass used for kitchen worktops and even for splashbacks. Yet you are quite happy to stick your face just inches from this glass, whilst driving at up to 70 miles an hour. This sort of confidence in glass seems to be at odds with the lack of confidence in the same sort of material when limited to being stationery in the kitchen.
Perhaps then it’s the heat? In which case consider this fact. Glass is used for microwave doors, and for conventional oven doors, and in both cases we have little concern for the fact that the glass in both cases will reach very high temperatures. But even more than this – if you look inside a cooker or oven you’ll often find people using a glass casserole dish, again with no concerns about the fact that the glass is getting hot. In fact in almost every microwave oven the platform at the bottom on which you place your food is made of glass, and again it’s much thinner than the glass used in glass splashbacks or worktops.
Glass can easily cope with the very hottest temperature your oven can cope with, and so heat is not a problem. What about scratching then? After all, you will often need to use sharp knives for chopping, slicing and dicing food. You may well have a chopping board, and in about half the cases it’s likely to be made of glass. In fact if you watch cookery programs on television they almost always use glass chopping boards and glass food preparation boards. The main reason is that glass is very tough, but it’s also a fact that glass doesn’t scratch easily, and therefore offers a smooth surface that can easily be cleaned hygienically.
The same is true if you had concerns about glass splashbacks for kitchens becoming stained. If you prepare say beetroot on a wooden chopping board you’ll find the stain pretty much stays forever. If you use a glass chopping board though the stain will wash off easily, even in cold water. This makes glass an ideal material for use within kitchens, able to withstand impacts, high temperatures, staining foods, acidic ingredients and sharp knives. In fact when you compare the alternative materials and you consider the facts about how glass is used in other situations it’s plain to see that glass offers is one of the best all round materials from which to make splashbacks and worktops which last, and look fantastic.