I think you know your kitchen and your vision. When I started my kitchen I wanted not different uppers and lowers but 3 different colors. One wall was a natural wood, the opposite wall painted red and the breakfast area at the end and the pantry coming off the breakfast area in a third color. Every single  and I mean "every single"  person I described it to said "isn't that too much?". The cabinet maker couldn't wrap his mind around it and had to do 5 sets of plans before he got it all right. Even after that, he couldn't follow his own plans and would only do and install one color at a time. As a result my small galley kitchen took MONTHS for the cabinets and adjustments to them. (...with all the other work held up by them.) Now that it's finished I think it's glorious and everyone is saying "Oh! That's what you had in mind." And I think it has a lot of personality and keeps the eye moving so the space doesn't seem so small. Someone here has some fabulous custom cabinets that are actually constructed of two different woods laid out in graphic designs. They're not the mood I'd ever pick but they're spectacular nonetheless and I can't imagine they won't really impress buyers should they ever be willing to let that kitchen go. You can always get a set of plans and color them in.

Sadly no cabinets to show yet...next month! :) We get to go see them before they get painted for any last changes, so I'll try to get some photos then. The shop is right that you really can't replicate beaded inset on frameless, though---ours don't have any beads and are a super simple door style, which made it a bit easier. My uppers will be 13" deep though---our (brand new!) plates are 10.75" and do NOT fit in a 12" deep inset cabinet. (Remember that with inset, you lose both 3/4" for the back of the cabinet and 3/4-1" for the door in the front, so interior depth of a 12" cabinet is probably more like 10.5" or less.) So yes, definitely good to check!

try a 36 in high corner cab with just a small amt of molding at top. keep the bottoms at the same level and the cabs adjacent to the corner at 24 to 30 in high with more molding at tops. the staggered dimension will be across tops. Give yourself 21 or 24 in backsplash height for this spot. What part of the kitchen is it? Assuming it isn't the only storage area, tweaking the dimensions for "looks" won't interfere with the storage you would otherwise need. You can do something even with normal 8ft ceilings[assume the soffits are gone].

Anglo, I'm going to respectfully disagree with you. I have a small (8 x 11) galley kitchen in the middle of a small space ( 20 × 32'). You see upper cabinets from the living room and upper and lower from eating. We used a med stain quartersawn white oak for lowers but an off white stain for uppers and our inset tv cabinet in the living area. Although we definitely wanted the QS oak, we didn't want wood cabinets on the walls since most of them are white plaster. To me, having the uppers blend into the background makes my small kitchen less choppy looking and not having dark cabinets overhead makes it feel more spacious. We put them in 12 years ago. When we had to replace counters a couple years ago due to a dead range, I didn't replace cabinets because we're still happy with them.