I have it on my island. It is very sensitive to etching, so I did my perimeters counters in Bianco Romano which is bulletproof.

I really wouldn't recommend blue bahia as your sole counter surface unless you don't have kids and don't cook. If you do, you'll be stressing every time you see orange juice getting poured, or a recipe calls for vinegar. Making fresh lemonade with the kids on a Sunday afternoon? Fuhgetaboutit! Otherwise it's a very beautiful and striking stone.

Regarding fading... I have no idea how it could possibly fade, to be honest. The color comes from minerals, not dyes.

Thanks chiefniel. My other kitchen surface I am planning is marble. Not going to help too much as far as being bulletproof. BUT, I don't cook anything ever, and I don't have kids yet and when I do, I just won't let them in the kitchen :)

LOL beagle, you sound like the perfect customer then! You may find blue bahia under other names as well, like Azul Bahia, and Namibia Sodalite Blue (which looks prettier to me personally, but I think might be the same basic blue sodalite composition if not actually identical).

Blue Bahia and marble would be a totally amazing combination to see in a kitchen. What color marble are you thinking of?

I want a marble that has blue undertones. If I could find a slab of Turkish carrara, I think that would be perfect.

Otherwise, probably just plain old carrara unless you have any other suggestions I should look at.

Too bad the calcutta gold marble doesn't go or I could get that and vie for the prize of the most expensive stone material ever put in one kitchen, lol :)

chiefneil do you have pictures of your kitchen somewhere online you could point me to? I'd love to see your combo. I just googled bianco romano and it looks really pretty!

Here's a few. Unfortunately the most amazing slabs of blue bahia that I chose at first turned out to have fissures so we couldn't use them. It turned out that there actually wasn't a whole lot of supply out there, so the slabs we ended up with weren't nearly as pretty - much more white whereas the first batch had tons of blue. We were on a tight timeline and didn't want to hold up the process, so just went with what we could get.

The fabricator did a nice job bookmatching the slabs. See how the center section has much more blue and dark grey? The original slabs were like that throughout.

{{!gwi}}

I like your marble selection. If you have a more modern kitchen, I think a marble that is predominately grey would also be a good match.

chiefneil your kitchen is absolutely gorgeous! You just basically 100 percent made up my mind that the blue bahia with the white perimeter combo is perfect.

I love the contrast you did w/ the white on the dark cabinets and the blue on the lighter cabinets. Thank you so much for posting pictures! I love your staggered height cabs too. You did a beautiful job!!!