Need to Seal Granite Countertops?

I just moved my fam into a new place and the lady who oversaw our move in (my work provides housing) explained the fiber optic lines etc. but then stunned me by saying the granite countertops were susceptible to staining from cooking oils and food grease. If that’s the case then why on earth is granite so popular? Would people pay so much for such a care intensive kitchen item? She later mentioned that she had previously thought that green crystal inclusions in the otherwise grey granite were a stain… I thought right then and there that she didn’t really know what she was talking about, so:

Do you need to seal a granite countertop before oil/grease can stain it?

I’ve seen miles of granite all over the country covered in urine, guano, crow poop etc. and it didn’t seem to stain the underlying rock. As a climber I sometimes get stuck moving in proximity to some cave covered in the stuff or a ledge directly below a bat cave (reference Guano Ledge on the Leaning Tower in Yosemite) and never have noticed a thing…

Yeah, sealing your granite will make it less likely to absorb oils and alcohols. It will also darken the finish slightly. The stuff I have used in my house and recommended to my customers for the better part of 10 years is SCI. Good products, decent prices.

Granite can stain, especially the lighter colours. Honed surfaces are especially bad, those are almost impossible to stain.

:confused: Huh? The two ends of this sentence seem to contradict each other.

Yeah you seal granite countertops. Every once in a while you clean it and put a light seal on it. They do require regular maintenance. Next time you stop by a home depot or lowes ask the people in the counter top area. They will point out the tiny section for those things.

We had granite countertops put in a few months ago and they were sealed when they installed them, lifetime warranty on the seal. No maintenance/resealing necessary. It wasn’t an extra, the installer does them all that way and there was no extra or hidden charge.

Yes, just like tile grout, granite should be sealed. Granite is permeable. It’s not a big deal. A can of sealant is less than $10 and will do a large area. Seal it initially, then like a car surface, if water isn’t beading, seal it again. Once a year is probably plenty. It’s purely asthetic in that there will prevent any visible stains. It is not a matter of performance.

I can’t remember the exact specifics but when there is a green color in the rock it indicates a harder surface. This is especially true of marble. Marble is a softer rock than granite but green marble is harder than other colors of marble. If choosing a marble countertop a green color actually has desirable characteristics.

Thanks all for the advice, it seems so counter-intuitive to me that the stone need be sealed, but I guess, with the sealing the maintainence is only annual.