I Tried Good Housekeeping’s Favorite Cleaner on My Kitchen Counters, and Here’s My Unfiltered Review

In the homes I’ve lived in over the last few decades, I’ve been the primary caretaker of our stone countertops — meaning cleaning them several times a day. The first was a quartz countertop in a mottled brown blend characteristic of the aughts. The second was black granite, flecked deep inside with small gray-gold chunks of stone. And my current counter is a matte finish velvety quartz that could be mistaken for a grayish white natural stone. As a cleaning aficionado, semi-experienced homeowner, and mom of five who uses the kitchen heavily, you could say I’ve learned a thing or two about keeping stone countertops in tip-top shape.

I always have my feelers out for cleaning techniques, products, and tools that make cleaning tasks easier, and in my quest I’ve added some real winning items to my cleaning arsenal (among them Cif cream cleanser, my trusty pumice stone, and HOPE’s Perfect Sink Cleaner and Polish, which won Good Housekeeping’s Best Sink Cleaner award) and the results wowed me. So, when I saw that the Granite Gold Clean and Shine won Good Housekeeping’s Best Stone Countertop Cleaner award, I couldn’t wait to give it a try. I love not only a cleared-off counter, but also a sparkling-clean one.

Granite Gold couldn’t have been easier to use; all I had to do was spray it on my counters, wipe it down, then buff dry with a paper towel or a lint-free cloth. Afterwards, my counters felt squeaky clean and oh-so-smooth. I was impressed! 

However, I didn’t feel like the Granite Gold did any better of a job than my existing method of cleaning the counters, which is either with an all-purpose cleaner and a rag or with my favorite cleaning cloths, E-cloths, which clean powerfully with nothing but water. As much as I liked Good Housekeeping’s pick, my beloved E-cloth Granite & Stone Cleaning Kit comes with a polishing cloth, and I believe it’s this drying/buffing step that is the key to a streak-free shine, whether it’s with a lint-free cloth, paper towel, or the polishing cloth. 

The reason my experience with the Granite Gold was a bit lackluster may be because my countertops have a matte finish. Perhaps on a shiny counter, the “shine” part of the product would have really pulled through. I do think my counters might have been a bit more shiny, and maybe it was the “subtle sheen” Good Housekeeping referred to, but it wasn’t a drastic difference, by any means. 

For me, I’ll stick to my all-purpose or tool-only methods for my own countertops, but if you wish for a mirror-finish on your shiny countertops (I know how gratifying that is because I loved achieving it on my own glossy black counters in my last house!), I think the Granite Gold Clean and Shine is a wonderful “one-stop” clean and shine product you’ll reach for nightly.

Buy: Granite Gold Clean and Shine, $12.97

Have you tried Granite Gold Clean and Shine on your countertops? What did you think? Let us know in the comments below!