We chose Corian Egyptian Copper for our shower surround under the glass and in the doorway and for the bath vanity. We had corian in the old house and were very happy with it. The shower seat is also corian...we talked to a lot of folks who had granite seats and they all complained how cold it was. Corian is much warmer, but we did need to have special supports made for the seat as it's not structural.

We have a granite shower and did go ahead and use the same granite on the vanity. It doesn't seem too overwhelming to us, especially since they're on different walls so you don't really see it all at the same time. Here's the shower: and the vanity:

Wow-I am amazed that you remember names like that mom2reese! It is Lunada Bay Sumi-e but ZUSHI Natural. I picked it out from a small card sample and there were no blues on it so I was taken aback when I first saw the real thing. But I like it and I have that blue in my room luckily. I am not sure it goes so great with the granite hearth which was a remnant slab, dark brown with reddish/copper but I think the copper grout should help with that. We had to order some more is why we stopped here! Now I am thinking about going up to the mantle bottom and then maybe a band of 2 or 3 around the top of the mantle rather than the whole shebang. I would love to have something that sparkly for backsplash, will be looking at those again.

Hi Nursetammi, I went to check out some granite slabs on Friday and decided on the New Venetian Gold. I loved the slabs. It has lots of garnet specks in it which looks good with my cabinets. It also has black in it to tie in with the black island I'm going to get made. It was very confusing because they didn't have Giallo Napoleon and the New Venetian Gold sample that I received from another granite place looked nothing like the New Venetian Gold that I picked out. I would have thought maybe it could have passed for Santa Cecilia, but they had that color there and it wasn't the same as the sample that I received either. I'm glad I wasn't set on one color. Lesson learned is that the color you pick might not be the color you think it is at the warehouse. The guy at the warehouse showed me some other New Venetian Gold slabs that were from a different lot than the one that I picked and it looked way different. It wasn't as gold and it had more grey. Anyway, I'm probably about a month away from getting my granite because the kitchen island is currently being made. I will post pictures when I'm done. Please post pictures of your project when you are done -- I'd love to see it. Good luck!