I guess my response is too late for the OP's information. However, I have replaced toilets in three houses. The first house had two BR's and the next two had three bathrooms. First house was our entry level house in the Los Angeles market; we installed two boring Kohlers that performed well and quietly and I never needed a plumber for anything. Our next move up house was a huge jump up in cost, it was almost double square footage but the premium in cost was mostly because it had an amazing ocean view and marina view and this even from the shower in the master bath. In this house we upgraded with Kohler's San Raphael in the master and guest bath and in the powder room, we splurged on the St. Martin (or San Martine?) an incredibly beautiful toilet with what we thought was a pretty high price tag of over $800, which was a lot for that time period (the early 90s) though not so much in these days of the $3000 "hatbox" toilet from Kohler. None of these toilets ever caused a problem, though our plumber who was the BEST, (JEFF of family-owned and run Argyll Plumbing, if you're reading this out there in Torrance CA. it is you to whom I refer as the BEST) warned us that we possibly could have problems with the high-end San Martine but these never developed, at least not while we still owned the home. Because of a precipitous move downward in the income and wealth index by a lot (thanks to very serious mistakes by physicians at the Jacksonville Fl. Mayo Clinic, mistakes that could and should have been caught and avoided, mistakes that served to end my husband's corporate and international business development career with its comfortable income and more important, true meaning in his life, while at the same time our savings got used up and our retirement funds were almost breathlessly depleted while we looked on, heads spinning, and as we are now, the proverbial unhappy campers, saddled with credit card debt run up in a few years time but that will take years if ever to pay off, and forced to be "re-educated" and to deal with new goals not of our making: like living on a fixed income that has little extra for not much of anything and maintaining a home that we'd rather not, since our goal at the time this all began had been to sell the house and return to the West Coast, our real home, but then this "merde" came our way and by God, did it ever hit the fan!) the Kohlers in our three bathrooms in our current home are more modest models, either the Kohler Highline or the pretty little Kohler Santa Rosa. These toilets got replaced a second time though because of the newly introduced comfort height toilet, this a great feature that hadn't been available in 1999 when we moved into the one-year-old home and immediately upgraded the cheapy contractor's grade toilets, and a feature that we would only come to fully appreciate later on (my husband has had both of his hips surgically replaced,plus one knee, so far) and now wouldn't give up for any reason. We are getting around to replacing the master bath's standard-height Santa Rosa and I've come to this dependable forum for help with our decision. Because decisions like this now take on amazing significance. So rather than replace a Santa Rosa with another Santa Rosa, even as pretty as they are, we are seriously considering the Kohler Persuade Curv. I love the look, its slender beauty and the ease of cleaning the look suggests. (I'm not getting any younger). But I hesitated and have for a while. It doesn't seem possible that Kohler could offer that great look (a smooth bowl that jumped forward into the 21st century, leaving behind the tired look that mimicked the pipes, the interior function) and do it at a price point that actually was possibly attainable by the majority of the toilet-needing masses, this from the company that shocked the world (well, I was shocked!) with the $3000 "hatbox" toilet. After many years of nothing but success with Kohler toilets now when we don't have the resources to reverse a bad decision, the wrong choice, after all I've read about the Persuade, I am stuck. Is going with the Kohler Persuade because of the beauty of the look, (and because I internet shopped and found a very very good price) while I bury my head in the sand as to any problems lurking down the road, problems I learned about also on the internet as I researched WHICH KOHLER TO BUY, is all this by definition telling me I'm in a new world here and to tread carefully with my few precious dollars?

My neighbors who are interior designers and work in a fairly upscale home goods place in our town, swear only by Toto toilets. They sell a ton of brands, but those are the ones they and the plumbers who work for their store really like. They put Totos in their house, so that is what we bought. I read up for about a year on stuff for our upcoming bath remodels; keep reading good stuff about Totos. The higher end Kohlers can be good, but you can also end up with issues as well, not as consistant with manufacturing. Regardless of what you do end up buying, I'd buy from a plumbing supply, not one of the big box stores. For us, we went with Toto Promenade for both of our upstairs baths, the newest G-Max flush models which are also ADA height - not the older models and will be using a Guinevere or Soiree in our downstairs bath.

For what it's worth, this topic is timeless. Toto Drake is the model. They have short and tall, oval and round. Beyond that there are accessories for it. The best one has the features you want. I used to travel and work from hotels 5 days a week. At one time the hotel I was in was brand new with Toto Drake toilets. I liked them so much I ordered one for my house from a local plumbing supply house. When I went to pick it up they asked if I wanted to see the new American Standard Cadet III. I really didn't want to, but they had a demonstrator set up filled with golf balls. I tried it and changed my mind. One of the features I liked about the Drake was the antifungal and bacterial glaze. The Cadet III used the same glaze. They had rolled the Drake out to my car and I called them back in to exchange for the cheaper toilet. At the time the Drake was $409 and the Cadet III was $122. Since then I have bought 6 more Cadet III models for condos and houses we've moved to. It's the first thing I change. Until this house we moved into a year ago. It has American Standard Estate toilets. I'd never seen one, and after looking it up I knew why. $500 is way more than I would spend on a toilet. It has all the same features as the Cadet III plus nicer styling and a different flush wash through the bowl. Toto reinvented the low flush toilet in the late 2000s, but all the American manufacturers caught on quickly. They caught on so quickly that virtually everyone made a better quality toilet than Toto. I'm not certain what has changed since then, but the Totos are all up to the same quality standards as the rest. If you really want to pay twice as much to have a Toto, that's your business.

The thing about fireclay is that it shrinks as it’s fired, so each sink ends up slightly different in shape. Sometimes it’s not quite flat and level at the base. Sometimes it’s the rim. Sometimes it’s a slight parallelogram. You can’t use a manufacturer template with them. They have to be individually templated to fit the cabinet and for the counter. That custom labor takes extra time, which results in extra costs. Sometimes that means significant extra costs and delays if you find that the delivered sink is actually bigger than specs, Or the rim is so out of whack that it will have a 1/4” gap to caulk. That means a reorder. In one case, a reorder from Italy, which took another 6 weeks of not being able to cross the finish line. But since the client was the one who insisted on that product, the delay was on their shoulders. That was BC. Before Covid, Who knows what a 6 week delay turns into now. In the end, that sink choice was an extra 2K over choosing the recommended Whitehaven. That’s additional labor, trip charges from the canceled stone fabricator, and other add on costs resulting from customization and delay.