Compare mortise and overhead sink

The kitchen is the place where every day begins and ends. That is why it should be beau­ti­ful, com­fort­able and func­tion­al. And kitchen appli­ances large­ly deter­mine the com­fort of the entire room.

The com­fort of the room is deter­mined, among oth­er things, by plumb­ing. A con­ve­nient and prac­ti­cal sink turns dish­wash­ing from a rou­tine duty into a pleas­ant process. But choos­ing plumb­ing can be quite tricky.

In par­tic­u­lar, there are two types of this kitchen plumb­ing — mor­tise and over­head. They dif­fer in price, design and place­ment. It’s just not clear what is bet­ter to place in your kitchen.

In this mate­r­i­al, we will ana­lyze which sink is bet­ter — mor­tise or invoice.

mortise sink

Mor­tise sink, as the name implies, cuts direct­ly into the coun­ter­top. There­fore, it does not require spe­cial pre­lim­i­nary prepa­ra­tion of the kitchen set. Mor­tise plumb­ing can be installed in coun­ter­tops made of any mate­r­i­al — the ques­tion is mon­ey.

The fact is that prepar­ing a coun­ter­top for the instal­la­tion of mor­tise plumb­ing is an expen­sive task. In the kitchen set, it is required to make a hole that will cor­re­spond to the dimen­sions of the installed plumb­ing to the near­est mil­lime­ter. And if in some MDF table­top this can be done with a jig­saw, then in a can­vas made of arti­fi­cial stone or oth­er mate­ri­als that are dif­fi­cult to process, you will have to cut it using more pro­fes­sion­al and pow­er­ful equip­ment.

On the oth­er hand, this place­ment of the sink leaves room for both design and user expe­ri­ence. For exam­ple, the sink may be flush with the coun­ter­top or slight­ly below it (“recessed”).

In addi­tion, the shape and size of the bowl can be any. For exam­ple, in homes with large fam­i­lies, deep options that fit all the dish­es after break­fast will be appre­ci­at­ed. And adher­ents of an unusu­al design can install not a rec­tan­gu­lar bowl, but an oval or curved one.

Addi­tion­al­ly, the bowl can be equipped with func­tion­al acces­sories — a cut­ting board, a grate for dish­es, and so on. Mor­tise sink will make the kitchen more con­ve­nient for cook­ing and easy use.

But this has its own “price”. And it is not lim­it­ed to the cost of hole prepa­ra­tion. Mor­tise sinks take up a lot of space in the cab­i­nets them­selves, “eat­ing off” the usable space that could be used to store uten­sils or house­hold chem­i­cals.

In addi­tion, if large-scale plumb­ing work is required in the kitchen, it will be nec­es­sary to dis­man­tle both the plumb­ing and the head­set in some cas­es.

So, let’s sum up.

The advan­tages of mor­tise sinks can also be attrib­uted to the vari­ety of mate­ri­als. In most cas­es, sinks are made of stain­less steel, but you can find acrylic, stone, cop­per, and even stone (includ­ing nat­ur­al stone) on the mar­ket.

Overhead sink

An over­head sink involves instal­la­tion in a spe­cial pedestal, in which either the nec­es­sary hole has already been cut, or the coun­ter­top is sim­ply miss­ing. The vast major­i­ty of these sinks are made in stan­dard sizes for com­pat­i­bil­i­ty with a vari­ety of kitchen sets. The most com­mon dimen­sions of over­head sinks are 50×50 cm and 50×60 cm.

Over­head sink involves instal­la­tion only in a spe­cial cab­i­net. It does not have a back wall, since it is required to con­nect the sink siphon to the sew­er pipe. There are also no coun­ter­tops in such a cab­i­net. The inte­ri­or space of this piece of fur­ni­ture can be used both for stor­ing var­i­ous kitchen uten­sils or house­hold chem­i­cals, and for installing just a trash can.

Over­head sinks them­selves are com­pact and have medi­um func­tion­al­i­ty. The shal­low depth of the sink does not allow load­ing it with dish­es and does not pro­tect well from splash­es at high water pres­sure. The “wings” of the over­head sink — addi­tion­al pan­els — also have a rel­a­tive­ly small size. In most cas­es, all func­tion­al ele­ments of the device are placed on an area of ​​​​50 × 50 cen­time­ters.

On the oth­er hand, over­head plumb­ing solu­tions are very easy to install and dis­man­tle. When installing, even a spe­cial­ist does not need to be called — the sink can be placed inde­pen­dent­ly. The main thing is not to for­get to seal the edges so that mois­ture does not leak into the cab­i­net.

Also they are low priced. The price tag starts from a few hun­dred rubles! And thanks to the stan­dard dimen­sions, you won’t have to look for a cab­i­net for such a sink for a long time. In prin­ci­ple, you can build it your­self.

So, let’s sum up.

And anoth­er unpleas­ant draw­back is the high lev­el of noise, which occurs due to the con­tact of the water flow with a thin sheet of met­al.

Which is better — mortise or overhead sink?

An inset sink is beau­ti­ful and con­ve­nient, but you have to pay for it. Lit­er­al­ly. And the sink itself is expen­sive, and prepar­ing the coun­ter­top for it is not cheap. Over­heads will not require gut­ting a fam­i­ly pig­gy bank, but you can’t expect a beau­ti­ful design from them either. But the dif­fer­ence between the two types of kitchen plumb­ing is not lim­it­ed to this.

In gen­er­al, mor­tise solu­tions are visu­al­ly appeal­ing, com­fort­able and prac­ti­cal — but expen­sive. And invoic­es are a bud­getary stan­dard option.