Dekton worktops across the London Borough of Hillingdon

Built in the three decades after the war / 32%

Small kitchens are cut-out kitchens, and cut-outs are where sintered stone costs. On a compact estate kitchen the comparison with quartz is worth running. One survey, one cut list, one fit.

A house gives somewhere to lay a full sheet out flat, and a sheet laid out flat is where the last check on the template happens. We will say which format suits it at survey.

The middle half of our sintered stone range runs from £250 to £300 per square metre, across 71 colours, 63 of them Dekton. In Hillingdon, 13.5% of homes sit in council tax band F or above, close to the middle of the London range. What moves the number is the cut list (joins, cut-outs and how the pieces nest into a slab) rather than the floor area of the room.

Cowley has the highest share of post-2010 housing of the 22 Hillingdon neighbourhoods we list, at 23%, ahead of Uxbridge (19%) and West Drayton (17%); Ruislip Gardens has the lowest, at 1%. Modern carcasses are built square to a module, so a Dekton template on them goes quickly.

The share of homes that are flats is not even across Hillingdon: of the 22 neighbourhoods we list, it is highest in Cowley at 58%, then Northwood (48%) and Uxbridge (47%), and lowest in Ruislip Gardens at 8%. Where the kitchen is upstairs, the thinner Dekton formats weigh less on the stairs and turn more easily on a landing.

63 Dekton and 8 Karexa sintered stone colours in the range

Tones

We cannot post sintered stone offcuts, so samples are the Worktop Worx quartz collection only.