Ottawavalleygardener, I am not aware of any rules on countertop thickness for bathrooms versus kitchens. It is more a matter of personal taste and budget. The 3 cm is more expensive than the 2 cm. Also, there ends up being more cost in different edges. The standard edge offered by my fabricator was the eased. He only offered the 3 cm.

For my kitchen I ended up with the 3 cm semibullnose edge because I wanted something simple. Maybe if other posters put some photos of different thicknesses it will help you in your selection.

{{!gwi}}

I've seen kitchens with 40 sq.ft. of counter that was 2cm thick and it looked good.

There is no standard to follow for any reason.

The Lowes person was not a great salesperson, since he she didn't clear up whether you did or didn't want to have a return piece added to make the counter look thick. OTOH, there is no advantage to having a thicker looking counter, so he she may have just jumped past that hurdle instead of opening and closing the subject.

I just went to a restaurant where business is booming. They have 2cm thickness countertop quartz on their bar, with a huge return piece added in front (I saw the seam, and I felt the open space underneath.) Since this place doesn't have drawers under the countertop, it all works out OK. A kitchen with drawers under the countertop is where you probably want to make the drawers be higher than otherwise, and not lower. In my kitchen, the top drawers are shallow cutlery drawers at 32" to 35" above the floor. These numbers are for the base and the top of the drawer. One day, when I have time for fine-tuning, I'll unscrew the drawer slides and drill new holes and screw the slides back in but at 1/2" higher. It will be a tighter fit, but it will indeed fit under my counter (which is 2cm). These drawers I'm thinking of raising are interior drawers inside "deep" drawers, so raising them won't change the visuals. I also have another set of internal drawers underneath the ones I just described, and I can raise these too.

The reason for writing it all out in so much detail is to help you see that drawers are more important than the "weightiness" one gains by having a false front beveled onto a countertop.

hth