From what I have seen, bookmatching is usually done on a large island countertop, where one slab would be insufficient, so two slabs are bookmatched. Beaglesdoitbetter has beautifully bookmatched blue bahia island countertop and I'm sure she'll chime in once she sees your post.

For perimeter counter it is not necessary. If you have a good fabricator, they will be able to template your countertop with the seam in an unobtrusive area, usually near a corner, if applicable and template it so that it matches. Good luck!

Our granite was installed a few weeks ago and our seam is at the sink. Right in the middle of the sink to be exact. Our fabricator prefers doing it there because it is the smallest seam rather than having a seam go the entire depth of the granite. I think it looks great. You wouldn't notice it if you weren't looking for it.

We had to purchase two slabs and they were not bookmatched. Here's some info about bookmatching on the Granite Gurus website that might be helpful for you.

Here is a link that might be useful: Sabs are

Since bookmatching is only possible if the guys doing the cutting and polishing were savvy enough to polish alternating sides, many people don't even have the option.

My fabricator is all about bookmatching, but laments the fact that mony stoneyards have a dearth of bookmatched slabs; I've talked to some stoneyard employees who didn't even know what bookmatching was.

So, IMHO it's great if you can bookmatch--especially on a large island like Clarygrace said-- but definitely not necessary and perfectly fine to simply have the grains going the same way.

IMHO, it's great if you can bookmatch--especially on a large island like Clarygrace said-- but definitely not necessary and perfectly fine to simply have the grains going the same way.

Since bookmatching is only possible if the guys doing the cutting and polishing were savvy enough to polish alternating sides, many people don't even have the option.

My fabricator is all about bookmatching, but laments the fact that mony stoneyards have a dearth of bookmatched slabs; I've talked to some stoneyard employees who didn't even know what bookmatching was.

How busy is your granite and will the fabricators be able to match up the colors/ pattern without doing it book matched? That is the key question.

Check out this disaster of a counter here:

These people tried to save money by just sticking the ends of a slab together. Unfortunately, the fabricators did not ensure that the veining or pattern went together at all.

Compare this to book matched and the perfect seam here:

While you are likely not going to get a perfect match unless you do book matched, you can get away w/ not doing it if you have a granite that doesn't have very distinctive veining, like so:
{{gwi:1809473}}

If your fabricator is good, you can also do better than my example of a disaster counter, although again, not perfect. This one below is better, for example, because they matched up the big block of color at least. But you can still see veins dying and colors changing in an unnatural way:

Here is another example on a perimeter counter. The fabricator did a great job here:

Ugh, sorry I posted almost identical messages twice. Kept getting error message, so rewrote and re-posted.

Green--I've seen countless blocks of marble, slabs in order, straight from the quarry, sliced like a loaf of bread, with the same (not alternating) side polished.

Could this be a matter of marble versus granite? I mostly spend my time looking at marble in stone yards. I'm just wondering why it sounds like the norm in your experience to have alternating sides polished, and for me it's been the exception to the rule.

My fabricator would love to have his clients shop at your stoneyards!

Your question reminded me of this picture I took a couple weeks ago in the bathroom of an upscale tennis club. It's the first thing I noticed when I walked in, LOL!

So, yes, it does matter which granite you are using, but I would say pay the extra for bookmatched.

Here is my seam... it's so hard to see the seam that I can't really tell you if it's bookmatched or not. I did buy two identical slabs.

Seam is compliments of the masterful Joshua from Creative Soaptstone. This was right after install. Now that the counter has been in use for a year I'd have to really really search to find it.

It really depends on the slab and how TKO you are. My counters space is so large, I needed 2 slabs. Mine are book matched. However, I needed 2 seams and could not match both seams with the book match because of a large spot I was trying to avoid. Since my slabs were about $2000 each, I would not have bought 2 just to match a seam, but that is me.

Interestingly enough, the guys are here now to finish the seams. I am not really happy with the seams or the match, but it is what it is.
Here is the same slab seam:

And here is the book matched seam:

Now, you may notice that the veins are very different (color especially) but that is the nature of this stone. So in my case, the book match did not really help. Looks much better than the same stone seam but really would not be on anyone's list of great seam matches.

Wow this has been quite an education. Thanks everyone! It's definitely something to discuss in depth with the fabricators when I interview them for my job.

Our job took 3 slabs so 2 of them were a bookmatched pair and the third one was the next one in sequence (the one that had its rough face against the rough face against one of the pair. Since its polished face was 4 cm away in the block of granite from the polished faces of the other two, its pattern was very similar to theirs but there was some drift.

Our L counter has a sink leg that was longer than the long dimension of the slabs and longer than twice the short dimension. The other leg was longer than the short dimension of the slabs. That means there was no way to lay it out on the slabs so that all seams were bookmatched. (If both legs are no longer than the long dimension of a slab, they can lay it out with a diagonal bookmatched seam in the corner. Our kitchen fabricator doesn't like to do the diagonal seam, but in our case it didn't matter because of the long leg.) The only way to do our counter with only one seam was for the seam to be at the sink or dishwasher. Fabricators seem to be divided on whether a seam at the sink is good or bad, but over the dishwasher is more of an issue because there is no cabinet front for support.

We wanted the seam at the sink because it let us have just one seam and our fabricator preferred that as well. Our granite is 2 cm with a plywood underlay so it is well supported at the sink by the plywood and cabinet.

Our granite is very active, but the grain doesn't have a strong direction - in some areas, it slants across the slab and in others it was pretty swirly. We spent a couple of hours with the fabricator laying out the templates on the slabs. We were doing granite backsplashes and wanted a good match between the counter and backsplash and also had to fit long pieces for our window sill and counter outside the kitchen window. We chose a placement where the two sides of the seam were in a swirly part of the granite. I can see the seam when I look for it, but I don't notice it otherwise even though the color match at the back of the sink isn't perfect.

Recently we had a surround made for a new fireplace from the remnants from our kitchen. The top and one side came from one piece and the other side came from another piece because those were the only remnants long and wide enough.

I think the fabricator did a good job of positioning the pieces on the remnants so that the seams aren't jarring even though the long direction of the top piece was parallel to the long direction of one of the side pieces on the same remnant. BTW, the left and right side pieces came from the same part of the slab on the two slabs that were back to back - you can see that they are close to mirror images of each other around the white smile-shaped mark but the darker area a foot or two below the "smile" shows more differences.

Sailordive, the two sides of your "bookmatched" seam may have come from two book matched slabs, but it doesn't look like the seam was bookmatched. To create a bookmatched seam, the pieces need to be laid out on the two slabs so that the two sides of the seam are at the same place on the pattern in the two slabs.

For example, here is one of our slabs with the template for part of our L on the top of part of the slab. The end that will be one side of the seam is on the right (just above the upside down white smile).

Here is the bookmatched slab for that one. You can see that it is a pretty close mirror image of the other slab. For the seam to be bookmatched, the other side of the seam would need to be positioned in the same spot on the mirror image as on the other slab (again just above the upside down smile), but the pieces won't fit that way and the seam is the end of the short bit almost touching the top edge of the slab. (The bottom of that slab is the backsplash for that side of the counter so we have a great grain match on that long very visible area.

If your granite has a strong grain and you want to avoid the expense of an extra slab, see where you can do the smallest seams (like at the sink), the least conspicuous seams (like under the toaster oven, and where on the slab your veins are least pronounced and adjust your plan accordingly.

When we fabricated our soapstone, I actually uploaded photos of the slabs to my PC, scaled them, and drew little 'box frames' in the sizes I needed with codes showing what pieces joined other pieces where. Part of our backsplash is also soapstone, and by having one extra seam in a plain area of a long counter, we were able to match the major veins in our counter to their adjoining backsplashes, and sometimes even to the upper counter on the dining ledge. We did have two seams at the sink corners, and also at our cooktop cutout -- again, bot very short seams, well reinforced from below. But NO dead-end veins, and all of my favorite veins got feature locations.

It all depends on what size pieces you need and what logical options you have for 'pattern breaks' -- They're probably more flexible than you think.

Cloud_swift and Sweeby, thanks so much for the details and suggestions. And Cloud, your fabricator did a fantastic job, as did Beagles...the difference in a good fabricator really shows.

I have seen some really huge oversize slabs of granite at Dal Tile. HUGE. You might be able to find one the size you need somewhere. I'd call around or maybe the KD will. P.S. I looked for over a year before I found my granite, lol.

The NEW USE for Book matching is ideal to create a piece of art on your surface.

it looks like a kaleidoscope image. Sometimes it appears as a butterfly or animal or v shape.

it requires perfect symmetry and the fabricator has to "get it".

many don't.

the slabs have to come to the wholesaler book matched. 2 slices right next to each other polished on opposite sides. They create mirror images. It does not always work if the pattern is not the same in both slices.

It only has impact on a large surface like an island or wall.

book matching at Right angles like counter and back splash, is really a way to bump up the price. Your eye can't detect the symmetry.

I think of the term "bookmatch" when going for continuity between counter and backsplash. I was trying to get a vein running continuously from the countertop up the backsplash for the tiny 6' kitchen in my studio. I chose basic Carrara marble after the stunning Stonepeak porcelain faux Calacatta slabs - my first choice for a kitchen for several reasons - were going to cost $1000 more end of day.

I got home yesterday to discover my fabricator messed up and there's a 4" difference. Not sure why my shots aren't uploading but I hope the links work. Here's the space:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rm41qf16w8tj2gh/kitchen.JPG?dl=0

Here's what it was meant to be:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/2674ree6u7dru0a/Final-template-Jun%2006%2C%205%2018%2058%20PM.jpg?dl=0

And here's what happened (photo taken at night).

https://www.dropbox.com/s/1dvdtug54ou3l79/Final-counter-Jun%2016%2C%2012%2027%2041%20AM.jpg?dl=0

It's a first world problem I know, but having already paid through the nose for a slab vs couple of remnants to get the continuity, grudgingly accepting the much darker, muddier slab that was delivered (after the one I picked was sold to someone else - probably thinking I wouldn't know the difference), flipping templates on the iPad endlessly to try and get the least offensive layout, taking a day off work to visit the fabricator to tape up and and specifically make sure this tiny, tiny ask was was executed... this is what I came home to. The cost of this tiny job is $2850 so you can see why I'm mad. I could have just used a cheaper composite. According to my architect beau, when contractors goof they know it, and often "accelerate the job" thinking the client will just suck it because they'll argue it's too much trouble to reverse. My beau also said that if you want perfect work, you have to pay twice as much for a contractor that does perfect work, "because face it, most people like most of us, are shmucks."

I think the contractor should wear some of my disappointment. What do you think? I have to look at it forever, he doesn't.

@galfromdownunder I cant see your pics but this sounds like the same thing that happened to us! Did you ever get it fixed? We are trying to argue with our fabricator now!

No - such a pain to undo it all, so he just gave me a hefty discount. See photo below. Not a huge deal just annoying after all that effort. Live and learn...