The question every healthcare specifier faces
When you specify a surface for a hospital environment, you’re not just making a design decision. You’re making a decision you’ll need to defend — to an infection control officer, a clinical procurement team, a facility manager, and sometimes a building assessor.
The question is always the same: why this material?
For architects and designers who’ve specified Corian® Solid Surface in hospital environments, the answer is straightforward. Not because Corian® looks good — though it does — but because the technical case is built in.
What hospitals actually need from a surface
Clinical environments place demands on surfaces that most materials aren’t designed to meet. The requirements aren’t complicated, but they’re non-negotiable:
No harbourage points. Hospital-acquired infections are a genuine patient safety risk. Any surface with grout lines, joins, or micro-pores creates a place where pathogens can harbour and resist cleaning. Corian® is non-porous and can be fabricated seamlessly — no joins, no grout, no gaps.
Compatibility with hospital-grade cleaning. Clinical wards and theatres are cleaned with disinfectants that would degrade most surfaces over time. Corian® is formulated to withstand intensive cleaning regimes, including hospital-grade chemical disinfection, without surface breakdown or discolouration.
Repairability without replacement. In a hospital, a damaged surface can’t wait weeks for replacement. With Corian®, scratches and surface damage can be repaired on-site — sanded back, refinished, and returned to service without removing the surface or disrupting the clinical area.
Zero silica. Corian® has been silica-free since 1967. In an environment where staff safety matters as much as patient safety, this is a specification credential worth having on record.
DDA compliance. Hospital environments require accessible design as standard. Custom DDA-compliant washplane and vanity configurations are part of what we fabricate and document through our Design Solutions Service.
The specification confidence problem
The most common barrier we hear from architects specifying for healthcare isn’t doubt about the material — it’s uncertainty about the documentation.
“I know Corian® is right for this brief. But I need something I can hand to the infection control officer.”
That’s what our technical data sheets, certification credentials, and sector-specific specification guides are built for. Every hospital brief we support through our Design Solutions Service includes full shop drawings, renders, and technical documentation — so you’re not just specifying a surface, you’re specifying a surface with a paper trail.
St Vincents Private Hospital | Corian® used in the operating theatre wall cladding.
What the Design Solutions Service means for your hospital brief
For complex hospital projects — multi-section washplanes, DDA-compliant vanities across multiple zones, custom colour matching across a large facility — the technical coordination burden can be significant.
Our Design Solutions Service removes that burden at no cost to you. Send us your plans. We provide:
- Free shop drawings, fabrication-ready
- 3D renders for client and procurement approval
- Technical documentation for certification review
- Scaled prototyping support for complex custom configurations
- Ongoing coordination through to fabrication
It’s designed specifically for the kind of brief that hospital projects generate — complex, high-scrutiny, with no room for spec errors.
Specified in hospitals across Australia
Corian® has been specified in hospitals, medical fitouts, and clinical environments across Australia for decades. The track record is there. The technical data is there — and our team is ready to put it in front of whoever needs it on your project.
Ready to specify?
If you’re working on a hospital or clinical brief and want to talk through how Corian® can meet your specification requirements, our team is ready to help.
