Vogt Faucets Review & Rating Updated: 6/26/23

Imported From

Taiwan

and

Assembled in

Canada

From Domestic and Imported Parts and Components

Vogt Sinks and Faucets, Ltd.
trading As
Vogt Industries
121 Judge Road
Etobicoke ON M8Z5B8
888-215-8648
info@vogtindustries.com

Rating

Business Type

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

Product Range

Kitchen and Bath Faucets

Certifications

Brands

Vogt

Street Price

$230-$1,350 CAD

Warranty Score

Cartridges

Lifetime^{1, 2}

Mechanical Parts

Lifetime^{1, 2}

Finishes

Lifetime^{1, 2}

Proof of Purchase

Required

Transferable

No

Meets U.S. Warranty
Law Requirements

Not Applicable³

Warranty Footnotes:

1. The term "lifetime" is nowhere defined in the warranty. We do not know if it means the lifetime of the consumer purchaser or the lifetime of the faucet itself.

2. The cost of shipping repair parts or a replacement faucet is the responsibility of the customer.

3. Vogt faucets are sold in Canada, not in the United States. The U.S. Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act does not apply.

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Read the Vogt warranty.

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Learn more about faucet warranties.

This Company In Brief

Family-owned Vogt Industries has been in business since 2009. In 2016 the company was reorganized as Vogt Sinks and Faucets, Ltd., an Ontario business corporation. The company registered the name "Vogt" with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office in 2018 as a trademark for

"faucet taps, faucets, kitchen sinks, and tap water faucets"

which covers two of the product categories sold by the company under the Vogt brand.

It does not include bathroom sinks or other bathroom fixtures, showers, or kitchen sink accessories. However, the brand name is still perfectly legal for use on these products as an unregistered common-law trademark.

At one time, Vogt's products included range hoods and lighting, but these items disappeared from the company website and catalogs around 2016.

The Company

The company operates out of an office/warehouse building in Etobicoke, a part of the city of Toronto. It is a wholesaler and distributor.

It does not sell at retail through its website. It sells to the public only through decorative plumbing showrooms and wholesale to plumbers, interior designers, builders, and countertop fabricators.

It has no presence on the internet except to the extent that its authorized retailers advertise or sell over the web.  ^Note 1

The Vogt website does not have a "Where to buy" feature, so the best option for finding Vogt retailers is a Google search on "Vogt faucets" or contact Vogt customer support for a retail outlet near you.

Voght Faucet Manufacturers

Although Vogt routinely describes itself as a manufacturer ^Note 2, we have found no evidence of manufacturing.

Vogt is more accurately an importer and distributor of Asian-manufactured sanitary products.

According to the company, a few of the company's early faucets were modifications of existing designs drawn from the of the Taiwanese manufacturers that makes them.

Most of Vogt's existing collections were created from the ground up by Vogt's two-person in-house design team using the latest CAD design tools and 3d printing to model and prototype the faucets before they are released to one of the company's suppliers for tooling and manufacturing.

The company has also engaged a design firm in Dus­sel­dorf, Germ­any to assist with future designs, but, according to a company spokesman, has not decided whether to make this arrangement permanent.

In-house design combined with external manufacturing is a business model adopt­ed by several excellent fau­cet companies, and one that produces some very high-quality faucets.

Design companies make no excuses for the fact they consider themselves the creative end of the industry, leaving the nitty-gritty business of actually producing their creations to the less imaginative.

Companies known to use this approach include So, Vogt is in some very good company with its business model.

Most faucets are fully assembled and ready to sell when received from Vogt's suppliers but according to the company, the Zehn and Drava collections are assembled by Vogt in Canada.

The extent of the assembly does not rise to the level required to support a claim of "Made in Canada" as the term is defined by the Competition Bureau ^Note 3, and Vogt does not, in fact, make any such claim.

However, for our purposes it does make the company an of at least these two faucet lines. As Vogt continues to expand its faucet offerings, we expect local assembly to play an ever-larger part if only because it reduces the size and complexity of the inventory that must be maintained and it allows more flexibility in creating ever more interesting split faucet finishes.

Voght Faucet Components

Vogt faucets are well made using conventional construction in which th body and spout of the faucet contain and direct the flow of water as well as providing the faucets aesthetics.

Our examination revealed heavy-walled brass castings, precisely machined, with flawless finishes, and the almost total absence of plastic. Even Vogt's "stainless steel" faucets are actually thick-walled cast brass given a stainless steel finish. Weight is always a good indicator of the quality of a faucet. The weight of Vogt faucets is impressive.

The mechanical components used in the faucets are some of the best available on the market.

Valve Cartridges

The company's single-handle faucets, for example, are equipped with ceramic mixing cartridges made by Kerox Kft. of Hungary.

Kerox is well known for the high-quality ceramic discs that it sells to other cartridge manufacturers. Kerox cartridges are regarded by most in the industry as one of the best mixing cartridges on the market.

Vogt two-handle faucets include standard ceramic 1/4 turn ceramic stem cartridges made by the German company, Flühs Drehtechnik, GmbH, well-known for its stunningly flawless products.

Flühs, located in Lüdenscheid, Germany since 1926, is world-renown for its precision machining and is generally thought of as the manufacturer of the world's best single function stem cartridge.

Flühs (sometimes spelled Fluehs for English speakers) valves are heavy-duty products with an established reputation for leak-free reliability.

The combination of Kerox and Fluhs cartridges is used by many premium faucets makers like

For detailed information on ceramic faucets cartridges including how they are made and used, see Faucet Valves and Cartridges.

Aerators

The faucets also include Neo­perl^® aerators. Faucet aerators used to be simple devices, often no more sophisticated than several layers of window screen installed at the end of a faucet spout to infuse a little air in the water stream so it would not splash out of the sink.

Today, however, aerators are precision-engineered products used to limit water volume to the lower flows required by local water conservation laws, and in faucets with pullout sprays, to prevent back-flow that could contaminate 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.

Voght Faucet Design

The vast majority of Vogt's faucets are contemporary designs.

The company offers a few more traditional styles, for example the Innsbruck, inspired by a popular faucet from the 1980s and the softly sculpted Kitzbühel kitchen faucet which echoes the classic sweeping lines of the traditional "American-Style" kitchen faucet for which is justly famous.

But, apart from these, the Murau collection, a transitional design, and the bathroom sink faucets in the Zehn collection, the faucets are starkly contemporary.

Voght Faucet Finishes

Fourteen finishes are available on Vogt faucets, six of which are .

Polished chrome is the standard, offerred on all Vogt faucets and the only finish available on many Vogt collections, including Antau, Wörgl, Wels, and Kapfenberg.

The availability of a finish other than chrome depends on the fau­cet's manufacturer. Fau­cet finishes are applied by the companies that make the faucets and are limited to those the manufacturer can provide. Some companies can supply a wide range of finishes, others are more limited.

No one faucet is available in all fourteen finishes. The Zehn collection comes closest with ten finishers on its kitchen fau­cets and eight on its bathroom sink models.

Some finishes are available on just one or two faucets. Gun­metal, for example, was found only on the Andra kitchen faucet and Antique Brass in just the Zehn collection. We found the Chrome/Glossy White split finish on just the two fau­cets of the Lusten collection.

Finish Processes

Most Vogt finishes are finished using (PVD). Glossy White is the one exception. It is a powder coating – essentially a vary durable paint applied as a powder then baked to set the coating and finally given a clear coat of a very tough polyurethane.

Powder-coated finishes are the least hard-wearing of the faucet finish technologies. Often described as semi-durable, they are not nearly as robust as PVD finishes and require more care to maintain a like-new appearance. The most frequent source of damage to powder coatings is over-aggressive cleaning. Care instructions must be followed faithfully.

PVD finishes are at the opposite end of the durability spectrum, hard and extremely durable. The process was first applied in 1852 by Sir William Robert Grove, but the technology remained a little known scientific curiosity until the beginning of the Atomic Era in the 1950's when the need arose for virtually indestructible metal finishes that could withstand the hellish environment inside nuclear reactors.

PVD finishes are applied in a very thin (2 to 5 microns ^Note 4) but very dense layer in a vacuum chamber that is loaded with unfinished faucet components. All the air is replaced with a carefully calculated mix of inert and reactive gases. A metal rod to be used for the coating is heated to a temperature so high that it dissolves into individual atoms creating an ionic plasma that bombards the components.

To watch faucet components being given their PVD finishes, check out this brief video. Be aware that it is very noisy, so you might want to turn down the volume on your player.

Different finish colors and effects are created by varying the mix of reactive gases in the chamber. For example, a gold finish is often created using a titanium alloy, which in its natural state is a dull silver-ish color, but when combined with nitrogen gas, produces a convincing gold-tone finish on the faucet components. Adding a little methane to the nitrogen reddens the color resulting in rose gold. A touch of acetylene darkens the finish to a bronze with an antique effect.

Nearly constant experimentation with gas mixtures is producing a rainbow of new finishes, some mimicking traditional finishes like polished brass (but completely tarnish-free), nickel (but much harder than a true nickel), and stainless steel (that does not show fingerprints like actual stainless steel). Other combinations produce patinas not found in nature such as black chrome and mocha bronze.

The very dense PVD coating bonds to the fau­cet at a molecular level, essentially becoming an integral part of the fabric of the fau­cet and creating a dense and extremely hard shell (Rockwell HRC-80+^Note 5) that encloses and protects the underlying metal.

In abrasion tests, PVD finishes are regularly found to be 10 to 20 times more scratch-resistant than the old standard, electroplated chrome.

For detailed information on faucet finishes including how they are applied and the advantages and disadvantages of each, see Faucet Finishes.

Voght Website

The company website earned an A- on the usual scale of A+ to F. It is colorful, well illustrated, well organized with menu-driven intuitive navigation.

Faucets in a particular configuration and finish are relatively easy to find using filters to narrow choices. Unlike the filters on many faucet websites, these actually work most of the time. Unfortunately, however, filters are displayed only on desktop and laptop screens. On screens less than 770 pixels wide, the filters are not available.

The information provided about a faucet is reasonably comprehensive but missing some specifications that we feel are essential for an informed buying decision.

Each faucet is pictured in several images and briefly described.

Un­fort­unate­ly, most and sometimes all of the images are 3/4 views. Side, front, and even top views would be nice, or better yet a 360° viewing option similar to the one provided by based on software from Web­Rot­ate.

Clicking on the "360°" button displays the faucet in a box that allows the viewer to rotate the faucet with the mouse to view it from any angle. No more imagining what the back of the faucet looks like, just rotate it until the back is revealed. The feature takes the guesswork out of selecting a faucet from a few static images.

The "Certifications" tab displays a complete list of a faucet's certifications (something we wish other companies would do, so kudos to Vogt). The "Flows" tab identifies the water flows available for the faucet. Water flows tell you whether the faucet will comply with the flow restrictions in your locality. Most faucets show just one flow rate: the nearly universal North American 2.2 gallons per minute (8.3 liters per minute).

Installation instructions in .pdf format can be downloaded at the "Attachments"S tab. Installation instructions are useful to your plumber in identifying any potential problems with a faucet's installation in the location you have planned for it.

"Attachments" is probably not the most descriptive tag label. Most companies use the term "Downloads" which more precisely identifies the contents of the tab.

The "Attachments" tab may also contain a link to a .pdf spec sheet that can be downloaded and printed. It is not a true spec sheet containing all sorts of detailed technical information about the faucet. It is just a repeat of the information in the online description. It is closer to what the industry calls a "tear sheet."

Tear Sheets: In the days before computers, a tear sheet was a page (often perforated or scored) designed to be torn from a catalog and left with the customer after a sales call. The sheet is still useful in the digital age since it can easily be printed whereas typically an online description cannot.

Most spec sheets include a dimensioned drawing of the faucet, valuable for determining whether a faucet will be a good fit for a particular sink.

For some Vogt fau­cets the specification sheet and installation instructions are combined into one document.

What is missing from both the online description of the faucet and the .pdf spec sheet is the identity of the faucet's cartridge.

Cart­ridges are identified only as "ceramic cartridge" – not at all helpful. Just about all modern faucets use a ceramic cartridge. But, not all ceramic cartridges are the same. They come in excellent, good, fair, mediocre, indifferent, bad, terrible, and oh-my-God.

To find out whether the cartridge is a robust, reliable ceramic cartridge that will give decades of trouble-free service, you need to know who made it.

No one can look at a cartridge and tell whether it is a good one. For that testing, testing, and more testing is needed. The testing is usually not public, but it's not too hard to find out the general results for each cartridge manufacturer.

Vogt uses top-quality cartridges and should promote them. Not every reader will realize the importance of a Kerox or Flühs cartridge, but those that do (and that includes anyone who reads our reviews) will be glad of the information.

Lead-free certification is the single most important factor to consider in making an informed faucet-buying decision followed very closely by the quality of the faucet's cartridge. If you are not sure of the cartridge or the seller cannot produce a current lead-free certification, don't buy the faucet. All Vogt faucets are certified lead-free and drinking water safe, and all are equipped with excellent cartridges that will give years of leak-free service.

The site does have a few issues that could use improvement.

It is English-language only in a bi-lingual market in which many potential buyers speak French as a first language, and are proud of it. (According to the company, a French-language site is under development but is not yet available.)

There is no "Where to Buy" section. As a distributor, Vogt should direct potential buyers to where the faucets can be bought, a feature that would almost certainly improve sales and increase retailer loyalty.

Vogt describes some faucets as having an "Adjustable Aerator." Adjustable how and for what purpose? This feature needs more explanation. According to customer support, the adjustable aerator can be aimed in any direction, in which case, "Dir­ec­tional Aerator" would be more descriptive, but even this needs explanation.

The filters need to be a little more intelligent so that inappropriate choices are not displayed. For example, if the selected Class is "Kitchen" and the Category is "Faucet", the Subcategory choices should include only those choices appropriate to kitchen faucets and not selections such as "Bathroom accessories", "Body jets", "Undermount sinks", or "Cutting boards" that have nothing to do with kitchen faucets.

Voght Faucet Warranty

The Vogt faucet warranty is the limited lifetime warranty pioneered by The warranty is straightforward with no surprises and no weasel-wording. However, the term "lifetime" is not defined, and in any challenge to the meaning of the term, it would be most likely be given its colloquial meaning – the actual lifetime of the original owner, so "lifetime" could be a very long time.

The warranty does not comply with U.S. Mag­nu­son-Moss War­ranty Act (15 U.S.C. §2308).

Since the company sells only in Canada, Mag­nu­son-Moss does not apply. But, if Voght ever determines to sell in the U.S., the warranty will have to be extensively rewritten.

Canada has no similar national law. Individual Pro­vinc­es set the requirements for warranties.

These requirements can vary greatly from Province to Province, and for a company selling nationally, accommodating the varying provincial laws and regulations can be a major problem.

Most are included in the various Sales of Goods Acts (see e.g. British Columbia RSBC 1996, Chapter 410). These generally provide warranties of merchantability and fitness, the so-called "implied" warranties inherited largely from English common law.

The implied warranties require that a product must be fit for its normal use at the time of sale and continue and perform adequately for a reasonable amount of time after the sale.

What is a reasonable time, of course, varies from product to product. The lifespan of faucets is considered to be about 20 years, but most will last much longer with reasonable care. We have serviced faucets that have been in continuous use for over a century.

In addition to Sales of Goods Acts, some Provinces have introduced more detailed warranty provisions through separate warranty or consumer protection legislation.

Quebec's Con­su­mer Pro­tec­tion Act is probably the most extensive. It attaches warranty protection automatically whenever a product is bought or leased in the Province.

The Act imposes detailed requirements relating to quality, hidden defects, safety, the accuracy of descriptive materials, and the duration of warranties.

Products must be capable of normal use for a reasonable length of time, having regard to their price, the terms of the contract, and the conditions of their use. Generally, more expensive items are required to have longer warranty protection.

Unlike the U.S. where products may be sold "as is", stripped of the implied warranties provided by statute, provincial warranty laws do not permit implied warranties to be disclaimed or altered by a seller except in very limited circumstances. (See, e.g. Saskatchewan's Consumer Protection Act.)

What this means to the buyer of a Vogt faucet is that the company's written faucet warranty is in addition to, not in place of the Province's statutory warranties. So, if the Vogt warranty does not cover a particular defect, it may still be covered by the implied warranties of the Province in which the buyer resides.

Voght Customer Support

We have found Vogt customer support to be responsive and Canadian-friendly (which may be even friendlier than Nebraska-friendly, which is already plenty friendly).

We did not conduct a formal test of the service. Our usual tests do not work well if the company employs just one or two representatives. They very quickly figure out they are being tested.

We did, however, contact customer service to ask questions designed to stump customer service agents. In every case, we were connected to the individual who appears to be Vogt's technical guru. This gentleman proved to be unstumpable. The responses were largely accurate, reflecting good technical knowledge of the company's faucet products.

For more information on interpreting fau­cet warranties, see Under­stand­ing Fau­cet War­ran­ties.

Testing and Certification

Comparable Faucets

Faucets comparable to Vogt in price and quality but not necessarily in design or the exceptional number of finishes include Some of these brands, however, may not be readily available in Canada.

Conclusions

We judge Vogt faucets to be of good quality and suitable for use in a busy kitchen or main bathroom. They are a reasonable value with prices that are in line with or slightly lower than those of faucet companies selling faucets of similar quality. If shopping for faucets with matching showers and accessories, we suggest working through a showroom.

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

1. From "Evolution of a company" on Vogt's Linked-In entry.
2. We found the following references to Vogt as a manufacturer (emphases supplied):
   • "As Canada's fastest growing manufacturer, Vogt is innovative, current and fashion forward when it comes to the design and creation of our products." (About Us on the Vogt website.)
   • "Vogt is a Canadian manufacturing company that specializes in the creation and distribution of high quality kitchen and bathroom fixtures …" (Vogt's Linked-In entry.)
   • "As Canada's fastest growing manufacturer, Vogt is innovative, current and fashion forward when it comes to the design and creation of our products." (Vogt's Houzz.com entry.)
   • "We are Vogt Industries and we specialize in manufacturing and distribution of high-quality kitchen and bathroom fixtures." (Vogt's Facebook entry).
3. A "Made in Canada" designation requires all of the following;
   • The last substantial transformation of the faucet occurred in Canada.
   • At least 51% of the total direct costs of producing or manufacturing the faucet have been incurred in Canada.
   • The "Made in Canada" representation is accompanied by an appropriate qualifying statement, such as "Made in Canada with imported parts" or "Made in Canada with domestic and imported parts. …"
4. A micron or micrometer (international symbol: μm) is one-millionth of a meter. For comparison, a strand of spider-web silk is about 5 μm in diameter and the thickness of a sheet of ordinary copy paper is about 100 μm. The average person cannot see anything smaller than 50 μm.
5. For comparison:
   • High-quality carbon tool steel: HRC 55-65
   • Cubic zirconia: HRC 42-50
   • Titanium: HRC 36