My Cultured Marble Vanity Is Turning Yellow

Cultured Marble

• Builders and manufacturers create cultured marble by mixing ground up marble with polyester resin. The resultant material pours easily into molds and forms a hard bond as it dries. Cultured marble appears in surfaces ranging from bathtubs and hot tubs to sinks, counters and vanity tops. Some builders use cultured marble as a coating over less aesthetically appealing material. Cultured marble offers greater malleability than actual marble, allowing the creation of counters and inlaid sinks from a single piece of material. The bonds formed by the resin make cultured marble stronger than concrete and other materials, including granite.

Yellow

• Yellowing occurs as an unavoidable side affect of cultured marble aging. The quality of cultured marble affects the time it takes the material to yellow. Low grade cultured marble begins yellowing as quickly as 18 months after creation, though good cultured marble can go as long as 10 years without yellowing. The yellowing occurs because of the glaze, which changes color as it gets old. Cultured granite, a similar material made with granite rather than marble, also yellows at it ages, because it contains a similar resin.

Delaying Yellow

• Though yellowing is inevitable with cultured marble, you can take various steps to slow the process. Exposure to sunlight constitutes the primary cause of yellowing in cultured marble. Storing things on the surface of cultured marble also accelerates yellowing. For instance, if you keep a toothbrush holder on a cultured marble sink, the area under the holder yellows at a faster rate than the rest of the sink. To delay yellowing on a vanity, keep it away from windows receiving direct sunlight and occasionally remove all items stored on its surface.

Cultured Marble Maintenance

• Regularly cleaning cultured marble with a sponge and warm water helps maintain the material's optimal surface health, as does immediately removing any spills before they can stain the surface. Abrasive cleaners and chemicals such as the lacquer found in hairspray can damage cultured marble and potentially accelerate the yellowing process. Buffing the surface of cultured marble removes small stains and blemishes, though the buffering process differs from that used on regular stone. You cannot repair chipped or cracked cultured marble.