Do you happen to know what etched the sample? I ask because I have been living with my carrera marble countertop in my bathroom with Daltile Navelli Carrera Star tile and I have not yet seen any etching. However, I am concerned about it and would like to try to prevent it from happening in the future. I did go out of my way to put in a pH neutral hand soap and have not yet washed the countertop with anything but water. If you're looking for white, have you looked into some of the white granites and quartzites (white princess, luce di luna, white fantasy, to name a few)? They are very popular in the kitchens forum and the pictures look lovely.

Just to follow up went to the Tile Shop this weekend for their big laborday sale and fell in love with a display they had. It was basket weave marble tile on the floor, subway marble on the shower walls and a greek key trim in black going around it, gorg! Sadly we can't afford all real marble so we'll do faux tiles in the shower and since it's in a separate room anyway, we are the only ones who will see it. I have found one marble remnant slab for my vanity and just need another one for my husbands which is smaller so should be easier to find a remnant, right? I will attempt to post pics when this is all done around November. Thanks again for all of the good advice, jrueter, PPS7 and Pricklypearcactus!!

Hi athensmomof3, All my family live in your area (though we are in Savannah) and I, too, am doing a white/cream/marble kitchen. So, I feel a kinship with you :). Am hoping to look at slabs up there over Thanksgiving since I haven't found any I'm in love with down here. We are doing calacatta on countertops & island. I find it to be much warmer than carrara, which I have in the master bath. Cararra IMO definitely has a cooler, more gray cast to it, whereas the calacatta is a bit warmer with gray and warm taupey veins in it. I am going to play up the warm taupiness of the calacatta. Perimeter cabs will be BM white dove and the island a dark taupe- BM wildwood crest. I too don't want a stark space, so I am going to do a really light creamy taupey color in the sunroom/FR that is at one end of the kitchen. Trying to pull this color from the marble veining, so still working on it. F&B white tie and lime white are gorgeous and would be beautiful on the wall with white cabs (I may use it myself ). The white dove is definitely not stark white and looks great with the marble. I have trouble with links, but if you google Atlanta Homes magazine "modern glam" that's a gorgeous creamy kitchen. I think it's limestone, but same idea would be beautiful with marble. Keep us posted - your kitchen sounds like it will be spectacular & I'd love to hear about your paint choices, since I am still debating on color for my breakfast room cabinets. Good Luck! Meb I

Shouldn't marble not stain if it's sealed? I think the real issues are etching and scratching. Those pictures are helpful for people, but they should also realize they're kind of the "worst case" scenarios. Carrera will etch, every bit as much as those pictures show, but it usually won't look as bad as those pictures, if that makes any sense. The pictures have to be taken at the right angle to get the etches to show for a picture. That last picture looks so awful because it's stained, which doesn't seem to happen to most people who have their counters sealed when needed. The first three pictures are fairly representative of what friends with carrera-type marbles live with, but their etches are not very noticeable when you walk in their kitchens. On the whitish marbles at least, those etches would not be noticeable in most light conditions to someone who's just walking through the kitchen. (I don't know about the third one that's brownish--I've never seen anyone with a polished counter in that color of marble.) A good friend of mine has carrera counters in her kitchen that gets lots of light, and she has hundreds of etches. Unless you bend your head and crane your neck to look for them, you won't notice them. Her honed finish makes a big difference to this--with a polished finish, the difference in finish between the etch and the rest of the counter will be more noticeable. She also doesn't have direct sunlight hitting them through most of the day. I also have marble counters, but they're dolomitic marble, so they're a bit slower to etch. In other words, we can spill lemon juice on them, and it won't etch if we wipe if up within a few minutes. Our counters are just as soft as non-dolomitic marble in most places, and we have thousands of tiny scratches on our polished finish counters. Most of them are like the ones visible in the fourth picture, and with the veining of our counters, they're not noticeable unless you look for them. Over time, the polished finish is developing its "patina" and getting less shiny. They're still gorgeous, and I'd do them again in a heartbeat. But I would not have risked polished counters with carrera. I did want to mention the scratching because I think it sometimes gets overlooked as people worry about etching. Both will happen to marble, no matter how much you baby it.