Stylish Faucets Review & Rating Updated: April 11, 2025

Imported

China

Stylish International, Inc.

trading as

Stylish

85 Thompson Dr.

Cambridge, ON N1T 2E4

1-855-789-5352

care@stylishkb.com

Rating

Business Type

For more information on the five faucet company business types, see Faucet Companies

Product Range

Kitchen & Bath Faucets

Certifications

Brands

Stylish

Street Price

$167.68 - $333.27 (CAD)

$131.02 - $260.41 (USD)

Warranty Score

Cartridge

5-years

Finishes

Lifetime¹

Mechanical Parts²

5-years

Proof of Purchase

Required

Transferable

No

Meets U.S. Warranty
Law Requirements

No¹

Warranty Footnotes:

1. "Lifetime" is defined as being "for as long as the original purchaser owns their [sic] home." However, the "mechanical parts" of the faucet – essentially all of the moving parts – are covered for just five years.

2. "Mechanical components including cartridges are warranted to be free from manufacturing defects under normal use for five years, …"

3. The warranty is missing specific language required by U.S. warranty law. (The language is not required in Can­a­da.)

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Read the Stylish faucet warranty.

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Learn more about faucet warranties.

This Company In Brief

Stylish International, Inc. is an importer, distributor, and retailer of Chinese-made sinks, sink accessories, and fau­cets.

The company sells primarily in Can­a­da through internet retailers. It has more recently expanded its market into the U.S.

The fau­cets are of generally good quality. Some include top-drawer components such as ceramic cartridges and aerators. They are, however, poorly supported by a sub-par warranty.

Stylish International, Inc. is a Canadian company formed in 2016 as an Ontario corporation by Pedro Perez as the successor to Stylish Kitchen and Bath, a proprietorship owned by Mr. Perez that specialized in remodeling kitchens and baths in the Waterloo, Ontario area.

Its Bet­ter Busi­ness Bur­eau profile indicates that Styl­ish Kitch­en and Bath was in business for five years between 2011 and 2016 and received very good marks during that time for customer satisfaction.

Stylish International has inherited the Stylish Kitchen and Bath website, stylishkb.com.

The company imports and distributes fau­cets, and related accessories in Ca­na­da and the U.S. It also sells the products directly to consumers through its website and other internet venues such as Am­a­zon, Home De­pot (Can­ada), Houzz, Over­stock, Way­fair, Wal­mart (Ca­na­da), and Best Buy (Ca­na­da).

The Stylish website has a list of retail sources in Can­a­da and the U.S.

The Stylish logo design, but not the word, "Stylish", has been registered as a trademark in both the U.S. and Can­a­da as applied to:

"Sinks, vanity sinks, vanity top sinks, kitchen sinks, sinks integrated into counters or countertops; plumbing supplies/fittings, namely, sink strainers; stainless steel bottom grids specially adapted and shaped for use in sinks; Bathroom fau­cets, kitchen fau­cets, showers; plumbing fixtures, namely, sink sprayers, shower mixers, sink traps and shower sprayers"

Manufacturers

The company has assembled an attractive collection of fau­cets, established a recognizable brand, and ensured a widespread distribution network in the short years it has been in business.

Stylish claims on its website to be a company that

"…company that designs and manufactures modern and innovative sinks and fau­cets. …"

There is no evidence, however, that either its sinks or its fau­cets are designed or manufactured by Styl­ish In­ter­na­tion­al.

It is, in fact, neither a manufacturer nor an assembler. It is an importer. Its faucets are designed, manufactured, and assembled by Chinese factories. The principal suppliers of Stylish fau­cets include:

• Kaiping Thun sanitary Ware Co, Ltd. is a relatively new Chinese company, established in 2010, that designs, engineers, and manufactures stainless steel faucets for export.

• Wenzhou Haijun Sanitary Hardware Co. Ltd. established in 1999, specializes in the production of primarily for export, but also manufactures for domestic Chinese fau­cet companies.

• Kaiping Cheston Sanitary Ware Co., Ltd. manufactures faucets, showers, and bathroom accessories from brass. The company also trades as Zhuoyang Sanitary Ware.

• Jiangmen Anmei Industrial Co., Ltd. does business under the registered trade name, Lanerdi^®. It is a veteran manufacturer, producing quality faucets in brass and stainless steel for over 25 years.

These companies may not supply all of the faucets sold by Stylish. There are almost certainly other suppliers that we have not yet identified. These companies have good reputations for manufacturing quality products, but none of them is , which means that they do not have a certified quality control improvement program in place.

Faucet Design & Styling

Stylish fau­cets are unblushingly contemporary. The company does not even pretend that any of its fau­cets are traditional or transitional in style. All fau­cets are single-handle designs. The company does not sell two-handle fau­cets.

If you are looking for a fau­cet to finish off a bath or kitchen in a heritage or traditional decor, you may have to look elsewhere for a fau­cet that is suitable for any period other than the modern era.

The fau­cets are fairly common Chinese designs, attractive enough but exhibiting no particular design originality.

The goal of Chinese fau­cet manufacturers is to sell as many fau­cets as possible, which means keeping their designs well within the mainstream to appeal to as many potential buyers as possible.

Although some Chinese manufacturers have begun producing original designs, some of which have won awards in international design competitions, design adventures in the Chinese fau­cet industry are still very rare.

Designs are usually adopted from Europe and North America.

A style that sells well in these major markets will often be imitated by Asian factories (with minor changes to avoid patent infringement). The lag time is usually 3 to 5 years, so by the time a design appears in a Chinese fau­cet it is no longer new.

Stylish's fau­cet designs fit this pattern. They are pleasant and often smartly styled, but most are over a decade old, some are well past voting age, and a few are looking at their thirtieth anniversary in the rear-view mirror.

The company's kitchen fau­cet styles are, in the opinion of our design staff, more interesting than its bath fau­cets.

While similar to styles offered by many other importers of Chinese-made fau­cets, the kitchen collection is well-assembled, showing a good eye for contemporary design.

The lavatory fau­cets are attractive but fairly common – found in large numbers wherever fau­cets are sold. An example is the Vita fau­cet, a version of a design that originated in the late 1970s. It is sold, with minor variations, by nearly every company that sells bathroom fau­cets.

Some of Styish's designs have already come and gone from the inventories of other importers of Chinese fau­cets.

A fau­cet identical in style to the distinctive Gabriella lavatory fau­cet was imported and sold by until about seven years ago when it disappeared from the Kraus catalog in favor of newer designs.

It is still available, however, from Kubebath as the Elegance fau­cet and from Aqua Gallery as the Model 02716 Basin Faucet. Both Kubebath and Aqua Gallery also import their faucets from China.

Faucet Finishes

Stylish does not own a finishing facility and does not finish its fau­cets.

It buys them already finished. Six finishes are available, some of which may be combined on a fau­cet as in which a base finish is paired with an accent finish. The finishes available for a faucet vary by manufacturer.

For kitchen fau­cets made of stainless steel, one of the available "finishes" is stainless steel which is not an applied finish but the steel material itself polished and brushed to an attractive finish. This is Stylish's "Brushed" or "Brushed Stainless" finish.

Two applied finishes are also available on kitchen faucets: Matte Black, and Brushed Gold. Some stainless fau­cets, like the Tivoli spring fau­cet, can be purchased in : Matte Black with Brushed Gold or Brushed Stainless with Brushed Gold.

Brass fau­cets offer more finish variety including Polished Chrome, Brushed Nickel, Matte Black, Brushed Gold, and Gunmetal (a medium gray). Some are available in including Matte Black with Brushed Nickel and Matte Black with Brushed Gold.

Brushed Nickel is very close to the company's Brushed Stainless finish and is often used on brass fau­cets to give the fau­cet the appearance of being stainless steel to complement stainless steel sinks.

Not every finish is available on every fau­cet. Just two fau­cets can be ordered in Gunmetal, for example, Modena and Turin. The finishes available for each fau­cet are clearly identified on the Stylish website.

The company claims to use the "best technology to create lasting colour finishes", but it does not consistently indicate which technologies are used to produce a particular finish. Where it does, the information is usually buried in the fau­cet's description rather than being highlighted as a specification.

Knowing the technology, however, is important to judging the durability of the finish and its predicted longevity.

Polished chrome is almost certainly an finish. Matte Black, Brushed Gold, and Gunmetal are most likely .

Brushed Nickel appears to be a . As to the rest of the finishes, we simply do not know, and there is no information on the company's website.

Electroplating is the well-estab­lished traditional way of finishing fau­cets that has been around nearly since fau­cets were invented.

Plating involves immersing the fau­cet and the metal to be used as plating in an acid bath, then applying an electrical charge to both objects so metallic ions are drawn from the plating metal to the fau­cet.

Usually, at least three coats are applied, an undercoat of nickel and then two coats of chrome. The final finish is polished to give the chrome its characteristic high shine.

The process is potentially hazardous to the operator and the environment. It involves toxic and corrosive chemicals that must be disposed of safely. No other coating technology even comes close to the dangers involved in electroplating.

Physical vapor deposition or PVD is one of the latest space-age fau­cet finishing technology, rapidly replacing electroplating as the finish of choice.

Although the technology was discovered in the 19th century, it was not used in industry until the 1950s and then only rarely due to its great expense. Its first use was in nuclear reactors. Today,the technology is everywhere and the machinery required is getting smaller, faster, and cheaper all the time.

The PVD process is almost science fiction.

Load a chamber with unfinished fau­cet components, remove all the air, and add back a carefully calculated mix of nitrogen or argon and reactive gases. Add a rod of the metal to be used for the coating. Heat that rod to a temperature so high that the metal dissolves into individual atoms. The atoms mix with the various reactive gases to get the color and finish effects you want and are then deposited in a very thin layer – 2 to 5 microns – on the fau­cets.

A micron is one-millionth of a meter or 1/26,000 of an inch. The average human hair is 83 microns thick. The smallest the human eye with excellent vision can see without magnification is about 5 microns.

Despite being just microns thick, a PVD coating is extremely dense and, in consequence, very robust and durable. By some estimates, it is up to 20 times more scratch-resistant than electroplated chrome. From long experience, we know that PVD is nearly impossible to accidentally scratch or mar, never fades or changes color, and resists all forms of soiling.

It can usually be maintained with just an occasional wipe from a damp cloth to remove water spots. (And some PVD finishes are given a final chemical coating that resists water spots, so even the damp wipe is made largely unnecessary. A dry buff will do.)

The is usually described as semi-durable, not as robust as electroplated or PVD finishes, about as durable as the finish on your car, and requiring more care to maintain a like-new appearance.

It is essentially a dry paint in powder form applied using a special low-velocity spray gun that disperses the powder while giving it a positive electrical charge. The particles are drawn to the item to be finished which has been given a negative charge.

Once the powder is applied, the item being coated is baked in an oven which melts and bonds the powder and changes the structure of the coating into long, cross-linked molecular chains.

These chains are what give the coating its durability, reducing the risk of scratches, chipping, abrasions, corrosion, fading, and other wear issues.

Finish Care Instructions: Always read and follow the fau­cet seller's care instructions. Careful cleaning and maintenance not only preserve the good looks of your fau­cet but also your finish warranty.

Faucet Construction & Materials

Stylish fau­cets are made using traditional construction out of stainless steel and brass.

Stainless Steel

Some of the kitchen faucets sold by Stylish are made from stainless steel. The stainless steel is 304 stainless, an alloy that includes chrom­ium and nickel. The nickel gives the steel a crystalline structure which increases its strength. The chromium helps the steel resist corrosion.

Steel is much harder than brass. It can be made in thinner profiles that use less material and still have more than adequate strength.

Stainless 304, also known as "food-grade" stainless, is by far the most common alloy used to make kitchen utensils, silverware, cookware, and fau­cets.

Why Stainless Steel Does Not Rust: Properly alloyed stainless contains at least 10% chromium (which gives stainless its slight yellowish tinge) and a dollop of nickel. These form a coating of oxides and hydroxides on the outer surface of the steel that blocks oxygen and water from reaching the underlying metal, preventing rust from forming. The coating is very thin, only a few atoms thick, so thin that it is invisible to the eye under ordinary light but thick enough to protect the fau­cet.

Brass

Stylish lavatory fau­cets and about half of its kitchen au­cets are made of brass. Stainless steel contains no lead, but brass does.

Traditional (alpha) brass is a blend of copper and zinc with a small amount of lead added to make the material more malleable, less brittle, and easier to machine. However, lead is now all but banned in North America in any drinking water component due to its toxicity to humans, particularly children.

According to the En­vir­on­ment­al Prot­ec­tion Agen­cy (EPA), lead, even in small amounts, causes slowed growth, learning disorders, hearing loss, anemia, hyperactivity, and behavior issues.

Before 2014, a fau­cet could contain as much as 8% lead and still call itself lead-free. Now the maximum lead content of those parts of a fau­cet that touch water is 0.25% (1/4 of 1%), basically just a bare trace. In fact, there may be more lead in the air you breathe than there is in a modern fau­cet that has been certified lead-free.

We know that at least some Stylish brass fau­cets are lead-free – those that have been certified. As to the majority of its fau­cets that are not certified, we do not know whether they are lead-free.

We do know, however, that Chinese fau­cet manufacturers tend to use much less expensive leaded brass in fau­cets made for their home market, and are not above exporting leaded brass fau­cets to North America. (See Lead in Chinese Faucets.) Hundreds of these illegal, contraband fau­cets can be found on Amazon alone.

To comply with the restrictions on lead, today's lead-free brass replaces lead with other additives. One of the most common is bismuth to reduce brittleness without adding toxicity.

Bismuth is similar to lead – right next to lead on the periodic table of elements – but it is not harmful to humans.

It is, however, very expensive. It is 300 times rarer than lead, even rarer than silver, which is the reason that bismuth-brass alloys are considerably more expensive than leaded brass.

This increased cost has encouraged many fau­cet manufacturers to use novel methods of construction and substitute materials in their fau­cets where possible.

Some fau­cet companies like have turned to what is generally known as "core and shell" construction.

In conventional faucet construction, water is channeled through the body and spout. In core and shell, water is channeled through a tube, usually made of copper, inside the faucet body and spout. The fau­cet body and spout are just a decorative shell. The shell's sole function is to conceal the core components from view.

The main advantage of core and shell construction is that it does away with the need for expensive lead-free brass. Water never touches the brass shell, so it cannot possibly pick up any lead contamination.

Zinc & Zinc/Aluminum Alloys

A more common adaptation, however, is just to minimize lead-free brass by using a less expensive secondary metal, typically zinc or a zinc-aluminum alloy commonly called pot metal – its original use was in inexpensive cooking pots.

Zinc, however, is not as strong as brass and does not resist water pressure as well as brass. But, the use of zinc in non-pressurized parts of a brass fau­cet such as handles and base plates is common even among manufacturers of luxury fau­cets.

It does no harm when used in these components, and may save consumers a few dollars.

Plastics

Plastic is the other commonly used substitute material. It may be safely used in incidental parts like base plates and has been largely trouble-free in aerators and as casings for ceramic cartridges but otherwise, its use is suspect.

Unfortunately, Plastic spray heads (called "wands" in the fau­cet industry) have become the standard for many manufacturers, including some that sell upscale fau­cets such as

These manufacturers give three reasons for their use of plastic:

• Plastic does not get uncomfortably hot in use like metal wands;

• Plastic is not as heavy and is more comfortable to hold for long periods of time; and

• Plastic is a lot cheaper than brass or stainless steel – even cheaper than zinc.

However, plastic wands also fail much more often than metal wands. And although engineers have made significant improvements to their reliability over the past decade, the problem has not been entirely solved.

The Sure Cure for Too-Hot Spray Wands: The simple cure for spray wands that get too hot is to reduce the temperature of the water. Dishes do not need to be rinsed in scalding hot water.

Better wands are made of metal, insulated against excessive heat transmittal.

According to a company spokesman, at least some spray wands on Stylish kitchen fau­cets are metal, but not all, and the website does not identify the material from which the wand for a particular fau­cet is made.

Based on a visual inspection of Stylish faucets acquired for testing, we are fairly certain that all of the wands on its steel fau­cets are also steel but, the wands on its brass kitchen faucets are plastic.

Faucet Components

The critical components used in some, but only some, Stylish fau­cets are some of the best available.

Some kitchen fau­cets are fitted with ceramic cartridges made by the European technical ceramics company, Kerox Kft of Hungary. Kerox is the mixing cartridge preferred by upscale fau­cet manufacturers. Its reputation is well-earned for extremely reliable cartridges that perform well even in relatively hard water. We know it to be a very good, long-lasting cartridge.

The cartridges in bathroom and other kitchen fau­cets are described on the Stylish website merely as "a ceramic cartridge" – not very informative.

Our visual examination of a selection of these fau­cets revealed cartridges without identifying markings. These could be from any of a dozen Chinese cartridge manufacturers, some making good cartridges, some not so good.

As a general rule, companies that make top-line cartridges like Kerox are not at all shy about marking their cartridges. Companies that don't make top-quality cartridges are more reluctant. If the cartridge is not marked or is marked only in code, we assume it is not one of the better cartridges.

The aerators used in some Stylish kitchen fau­cets are made by Neoperl^®, considered some of the world's best.

Faucet aerators used to be simple devices that merely added a little air to soften the water stream so it would not splash out of the sink.

Today, however, they are also used to limit water volume to the lower flows required by federal and state water conservation laws, and in some cases, to prevent back-flow that can result in the contamination of household drinking water.

It is important, therefore, that this little device, often smaller than a dime, be the best available. And that, almost by definition, is the Swiss-engineered Neoperl^® aerator.

Stylish identifies some of the aerators in its fau­cets by name: Neo­perl. But other fau­cets include aerators identified only as "best-in-industry."

If they are indeed best-in-industry aerators, they should be identified by name. The absence of a name suggests to us that the aerator may not actually be a best-in-industry component.

Stylish Website

The company's website is very well structured and easy to use with intuitive navigation.

A lot of what you might want to know about a Stylish fau­cet appears on the website. Unfortunately, however, the information is spread out rather than in one place. The listing contains some basic information, a downloadable specification sheet provides additional information, and a tab entitled "Features" supplies most of the rest.

Typically, the listing for a fau­cet includes the fau­cet's dimensions, a set of downloadable documents, and the Features tab.

It is under Features that much of the information about the fau­cet is found, including the identification of its cartridge and aerator. It is not, however, in a convenient specification list, but buried in descriptive text.

Faucets are well-illustrated with multiple images, most showing the fau­cet as installed – very helpful when visualizing how it will look in your kitchen or bath.

A "Spec Sheet" and "installation Guide" are downloads available for most fau­cets. We encourage reading them before making a buying decision. There is no exploded parts diagram.

A few of the site's features are a little bothersome.

The site is very well illustrated, perhaps even over-illustrated. Loading large image files slows the site down, resulting in a latency of several seconds between clicking on a selection and the appearance of the selected page – even on our very fast servers with business-grade internet speeds.

Several seconds does not seem very slow, but by web standards, it is an eternity. There are several well-established techniques available to overcome this problem, including pre-loading images, and Stylish's web designers should consider them.

ADA and ACA Faucets

The website does not identify which fau­cets are suitable for users with physical limitations.

Almost certainly some are. In the U.S. this is called ADA-qualified, referencing the Americans With Disabilities Act. In Can­a­da, the applicable law is the Accessible Can­a­da Act (ACA).

Neither of these laws requires qualified fau­cets in private homes, but for those with disabilities, the ease with which a fau­cet can be operated is important information. The most the Stylish website says about ease of operation is that a fau­cet is "ergonomic."

Stylish Faucet Warranty

The Stylish limited lifetime warranty provides only fair protection for its customers, substantially less than the "lifetime" warranty that is the standard for fau­cets sold in North America.

It is ostensibly a lifetime warranty, but a close reading reveals that is considerably less.

The only parts of a faucet guaranteed for a lifetime are the non-moving parts – the "structure and finish." – components that are unlikely to ever give a problem. Certainly, it is possible for the structure – the body and spout – to rupture, but the odds of it happening are about the same as your odds of winning the lottery.

It's the moving parts of a faucet that have problems, and these "[m]echanical components including cartridges" are guaranteed for just five years.

Our warranty panel considered this, for all practical purposes, to be not more than a five-year warranty. The only factor that saved it from our lowest, one-star, warranty rating was the lifetime guarantee on finishes.

The warranty, while probably legal in Can­a­da, it is far from legal in the U.S. where the federal Mag­nu­son-Moss War­ranty Act (15 U.S.C. §2301) controls what must be included and may not be included in consumer product warranties.

In particular, a U.S. product warranty is required to …

The warranty's definition of lifetime – "for as long as the original consumer purchaser owns their [sic] home" — has two defects:

• It excludes buyers who are not homeowners. Because they rent rather than own their home, renters never receive warranty protection since the condition required for having a warranty – owning their home – does not exist.
• It does not require the buyer to continue to own the fau­cet for the warranty to remain in effect. The result of this omission is to expose Stylish to the possibility that the benefits of the warranty may be extended to subsequent owners even though the warranty itself is not transferable.

Consider this example:

Buyer installs a Stylish fau­cet in his house. A few years later he replaces the fau­cet with a newer Stylish fau­cet and gives the old fau­cet to daughter Nell who installs it in her house.

At that point, the warranty on the old fau­cet is still in force because Buyer still owns "their home." Buyer still owns the warranty even though he no longer owns the fau­cet. Continuing to own the fau­cet is not a requirement for continuing to own the fau­cet warranty.

He cannot transfer the warranty to Nell because, under the terms of the warranty, only the original buyer can own the warranty.

The question is: if Nell's fau­cet starts to leak, can Buyer claim under the warranty for the benefit of the daughter?

The answer is "yes." The warranty is a contract, and in most localities in Can­a­da and the U.S., the common law of contracts permits a party to a contract to enforce the contract for the benefit of a person who is not a party to the contract. In many jurisdictions, Nell, as the third-party beneficiary of the warranty can herself sue to enforce the warranty.

It may be that Stylish intends to exclude non-homeowning customers from warranty protection and allow the benefits of the warranty to extend to every subsequent owner of a Stylish fau­cet, but probably not. Inexpert warranty draftsmanship, however, can result in this and other unexpected results.

The Stylish warranty urgently needs the attention of an experienced warranty lawyer to eliminate the illegalities and clean up its language.

Apart from the legal issues with the warranty, however, there are practical business concerns.

We view a fau­cet warranty as reflecting the company's estimation of how long its fau­cets will last without needing repair or parts replacement. For Stylish fau­cets that is just five years on the parts that can possibly fail – not long enough for a product that most buyers view as a lifetime investment.

We see no business reason for the short-term warranty. The fau­cets we examined were, for the most part, well-made and many include some of the very best critical components. There is no reason not to backstop these fau­cets with a lifetime warranty on every element of the fau­cet.

The warranty does not reflect smart business thinking. If the company honestly believes that its cartridges, handles, stems and other moving parts will last just five years in ordinary use, it should be considering the purchase of better fau­cets.

We know, however, that at least some of the known components in Stylish fau­cets, the Kerox cartridges, for example, will last much longer. Most fau­cet companies that use them guarantee them for as long as the buyer owns the fau­cet.

We also take a dim view of the fact that the Stylish warranty requires the customer to pay shipping in order to get replacement parts under warranty.

This requirement does not save the company any significant amounts of money, further aggravates an already annoyed customer (making it virtually certain that the customer will ever again buy a Stylish product), and paints the company as pinchpenny and petty.

Customer & Warranty Service

The customer service provided by Stylish is responsive, effective, and Canadian-friendly. A call to customer support is answered almost immediately during business hours by a person, not a machine.

Automated answering is one of the most annoying features of our digital age, especially when accompanied by a robotic message telling you how important your call is. Kudos to Stylish for eliminating this aggravation.

Problems get resolved quickly and courteously without much fuss. We did not conduct our usual formal customer service tests. For small companies like Stylish, the tests do not work well. Agents quickly figure out they are being tested. But, the results of our informal contacts were more than satisfactory.

The Better Business Bureau rates Stylish's handling of consumer issues an A+, the highest rating on its scale of A+ to F. However, the company has not been vetted and accredited by the BBB and is not pledged to its high standards of business ethics. It should become accredited.

Testing & Certification

Stylish claims that its fau­cets are certified compliant with Canadian/U.S. standards. However, the overwhelming evidence is that while some of its fau­cets have been tested and certified, most have not been.

In consequence, most Styl­ish fau­cets are not legal to install in a drinking water system in either Can­a­da or the U.S. and they are not legal for sale in the U.S. and in most of Can­a­da.^[1]

Faucets installed in a drinking water system in either Can­a­da or the U.S. must, by law, be listed as tested and certified to comply with joint Canadian/U.S. standards that ensure:

• Con­form­a­tion: A fau­cet must be designed so that routine servicing can take place without dismounting or un­inst­alling the fau­cet.

• Per­form­ance: A fau­cet must operate safely. It cannot, for example, spontaneously change temperature.

• It cannot exceed water flow limits established by law.

• Its finishes must be proof against ordinary household chemicals and it may not leak when properly installed.

• Dur­abil­ity: A fau­cet is tested for life-cycle durability. For example, it is tested through its on/off cold/hot cycles 500,000 times. At the end of the testing, it must still operate normally.

• Drink­ing Wat­er Health & Safety: A fau­cet must not contain toxic materials or deposit harmful substances into the water passing through it.

• The most thoroughly tested is lead. It must not deposit lead into drinking water greater than 5 parts per billion (that's billion with a "b").

• It is also tested for arsenic, cadmium, mercury, and any of 500 or so other toxic substances banned from drinking water.

A fau­cet that fails any of the hundreds of tests performed by the testing center does not get certified.

Stylish fau­cets that have been certified are listed in the Certification Table elsewhere on this page.

Faucet Safety: For more information about government programs that keep unsafe fau­cets out of your drinking water systems and help conserve water, see Faucet Basics: Part 3: Keeping Faucets Safe & Reliable

The U.S. also has other requirements that must be met to legally sell fau­cets.

The most important of the additional requirements is compliance with the water conservation standards of the En­er­gy Pol­icy ad Con­ser­va­tion Act.

That Act requires

• A maximum fau­cet flow rate of 2.2 gallons per minute (g.p.m.) or less, and

• A certification filed with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) that the fau­cet complies with the maximum flow rate.

State and Provincial Flow Rates: Many localities have established lower limits. California's, for example, is 1.8 g.p.m. for kitchen fau­cets and 1.2 g.p.m. for bathroom sink fau­cets. Can­a­da has adopted a national flow rate maximum of 2.2 g.p.m. (8.3 litres per minute), but some Provinces require a slower rate. Quebec, for example, has adopted the Watersense^® maximum rate of 1.5 g.p.m.

A fau­cet that exceeds the maximum flow rate or for which a certificate is not on file with the DOE cannot be offered for sale or sold anywhere in the U.S. or its territories. A seller that violates the Act is subject to hefty financial penalties – $5503 per fau­cet per day for each fau­cet offered for sale in the U.S. without certification.

For Stylish International, the potential penalty for the 26 basic fau­cet models it offers for sale in the U.S. is $11,000 per day.

Stylish may feel that it is relatively safe in Can­a­da from U.S. law enforcement, but the Department of Energy has in the past successfully reached out to penalize companies based outside of the U.S. including England and China.

Stylish has the potential to become a first-class fau­cet company offering good quality products for a reasonable price. Its kitchen fau­cets, particularly its stainless steel fau­cets, are well-chosen designs of exceptional quality for the price. Bathroom fau­cets are, overall, of lower quality and not as stylish but still reasonably priced.

But, it cannot proceed further until it has its fau­cets certified, fixed the problems with its warranty, and provides more detail on its website about the key components used in its bath fau­cets.

Comparable Faucets

Faucets made in China comparable to Stylish in quality with the same or a better warranty, but not necessarily comparable for design or price, include

Conclusions

If you are in the market for a good quality faucet at a reasonable price for your kitchen, Stylish may be your answer.

Our examination of Stylish kitchen faucets suggests they are well made and some include Kerox cartridges and Neoperl aerators, both best-in-class components.

The company's lavatory faucets are more of a mystery. The company has not disclosed the source of the cartridges or aerators. Cartridges are the heart of a modern faucet, and until we know more about the origin of these critical components, we suggest second thoughts about buying a Stylish bathroom faucet are very much in order.

If you decide to purchase a Stylish fau­cet we suggest that

• You ensure that the faucet has a good cartridge. Kerox is one such cartridge but there are others. See Faucet Basics, Part 2: Faucet Valvesamp; & Cartridges for the identity of others. If the identity of the cartridge is not disclosed on the company website, telephone customer support for that information.
• You select a faucet that is certified. Without testing and certification, you cannot know whether the faucet is durable, safe and lead-free. Nor can you legally install an uncertified faucet in any drinking water system. You can be fined, and in some states, do a little jail time for doing so.
• Don't rely exclusively on our Certification Table. It is accurate only as of the date of this report. Things may have changed. Telephone customer support and get a copy of the certifications for your chosen faucet.
• You be mindful that for all practical purposes, these faucets have a very short term 5-year warranty on the cartridges and other moving parts of the faucet that promises to provide the parts required to repair a defective faucet, but only if you pay to have the parts delivered.

We are continuing to research the company. If you have experience with Stylish fau­cets, good, bad, or indifferent, we would like to hear about it, so please contact us or post a comment below.

1. See e.g. Régie du Bâtiment du Québec prohibiting the "sale or lease" of uncertified fau­cets in Quebec Province.