Marble Restoration: How to Tell It’s Time for a Deep Clean

Marble, the natural stone that’s a popular choice of countertop material year in and year out in the interior design world, deserves it’s day in court! By that, we mean it deserves a blog dedicated to discussing the process of restoring marble. It’s an important topic if you are the proud (and design-savvy) owner of marble surfaces, because consistent and proper maintenance is required to maintain the beauty and longevity of your marble surfaces.

Here’s a brief explanation of why: marble is a metamorphic rock – meaning it’s a combination of rocks that under intense pressure and extreme temperatures, transform into marble. The rocks that commonly undergo the metamorphosis that creates marble include calcite, limestone, dolomite, and serpentine. It’s the formation process that makes marble more susceptible to scratches, stains, and cracks. Here’s what you need to know about marble restoration, especially how to tell it’s time for a deep clean:

“Restoration” Defined

To know if it’s time to restore your marble, you need to know what’s meant by restoration. Relevant to marble, restoration is a “large-scale remedial action taken to restore…to near-original condition,” making the original condition of your marble as it left the factory an important marker. Generally, marble is sealed at the end of the manufacturing process, but how it’s sealed and with what depends on the specific type, name, and origin of your marble. Once these details are clear, you’ll have a gauge on whether your marble needs to be honed and polished (the two main steps in restoration) in order to return to near-original condition!

Questions to Ask Yourself When Assessing Your Marble

The National Stone Institute (yup, it’s a thing) has, for your convenience, curated a list of questions to ask yourself to facilitate and accurately assess your marble’s condition. Follow this link to page six of the NSI’s Guide to the Care & Cleaning of Natural Stone for their complete list. Some of the questions are common sense but others are more technical, so we figured it’s best to relay you to the most reliable source for marble restoration!

Obvious Signs a Deep Clean is Due!

The questions in the previous section should help you accurately assess the condition of your marble surfaces, especially if you have little to no knowledge of marble or you’re unsure of how to interpret the wear-and-tear that you are able to identify. There are, however, obvious signs that your marble is due for a deep cleaning or more comprehensive restoration.

These signs include visible cracks and scratches, stains and discoloration that have absolutely no correlation to your marble’s original color, texture, and overall appearance, and a definitely dull appearance. Fresh out of the factory, marble is noticeably shiny. You may not notice your marble lose its shine on a day-to-day basis, but over long periods of time marble will cloud and dull. If your marble is suffering from any of the above, it’s time for restoration!