I have a stainless steel countertop on my cooktop wall. I love it. It has a brushed finish but it looks shiny and pretty. In my opinion you shouldn't try to match your island top to the stainless steel. The stainless steel is neutral and will coordinate with just about any other color or texture. In my case I used carrara marble for my island, which does have grey veining, but I could just have easily used soapstone, butcher block or a light or dark granite. I would choose the color of your island cabinetry first and then choose a countertop that goes with that.

Here's my SS countertop. You can see the corner of my island at the bottom:

Good luck!

Erika

Erika, I love your kitchen.

You have the very clean look that I love. May I ask about your kitchen cabinets? And I see that you have what looks like a black island.? How did you achieve that if you didn't go for custom cabinets? I won't be going custom on my cabinets because I'm splurging on my countertops, but I've heard so much about painting cabinets yourself vs having them factory finished that I'm not sure if I should even attempt it or how it's to be done. Can you give me some details on the planning/creation of your kitchen? Also, no worries about the marble countertop or are you one of the "imperfections add character" crowd? :) My island is probably going to be where the majority of my prepwork will be and so I need something durable and stain-resistant. What made you choose marble?

Thanks!

My cabinets are custom from Crown Point. My old cabinets were in horrible shape so there was no chance of refinishing them, plus our entire layout changed and the kitchen doubled in size. The island is actually a dark brown stain called Russet. The perimeters are painted in a color called Paper White.

I'm not sure which cabinet brands you're looking at. In the master bath I have Kraftmaid cabinets which are a non-custom line I ordered through Home Depot, and I like them very much. Many people here have used Ikea cabinets with beautiful results. Many others on the forum have created gorgeous kitchens by refinishing their cabinets themselves or having them refinished by someone. We decided since we were going with paint instead of stain for most of our cabinets we really wanted the factory finish so we wouldn't have to worry as much about cleaning them and chipping.

As far as planning the kitchen, I was initially working with a local kitchen designer but we ended up parting ways because she seemed to be designing a kitchen for herself instead of for me. I posted my layout here on GW and ended up getting a tremendous amount of help from wonderful people here to design a layout that proved to be very functional as well as incorporating the aesthetic aspects that were very important to me. The Crown Point KD helped me tweak the layout further.

As far as choosing the style, colors, textures, etc. what helped me tremendously was I collected a large portfolio of kitchens that I loved, some from magazines, most from online. All those photos greatly helped me to crystallize my vision for my kitchen space. I started noticing certain colors and styles in common in many of my inspiration kitchens.

The result is that I now have my dream kitchen that is exactly customized to the way I cook and how my family lives. I get such a huge amount of enjoyment from working in a kitchen for which I so carefully planned every detail down to what would be stored in every single drawer.

As far as the marble, yes, I'm the type that doesn't fear the patina. I chose marble because I wanted something different from shiny, new-looking granite (which I have in my guest bath and love) for my kitchen. I was looking for that vintage feel mixed with modern. The good news is that my honed marble is sealed well, doesn't stain and requires no greater maintenance than my granite. It does have etch marks but you have to try really hard to see them and in my opinion they don't at all detract from the beauty of my marble. Everyone who comes into my kitchen has the same reaction: they can't help but touch that marble and marvel at its beauty. I did keep the marble backsplash on my cooktop wall polished for a little extra drama.

By the way, my stainless steel countertop has lots of scratches. It still looks great and eventually I'm sure they'll all just merge together. More patina!

I hope that answered your questions. Let me know if you have more! =)

Erika

Wow, the colors in that HGTV kitchen are gorgeous.

I was going to say I love gray, but not sure if using it would look like you were trying to match the stainless and missed....then realized...Oh my goodness...I have a section of stainless counters over a section of gray painted cabinets, and other gray counters on wood and burgundy cabs for the perimeter! So I've done what I was just going to advise against. A bit of a credibility problem!

I like the idea of cream for the island's top, whether you paint it cream, gray, or have a wood tone...maybe in a honed quartz or Richlite-type product so you get the solid color. My other idea is to consider something partway between the cream and the terra cotta, like a dark tan (I think there's a Richlite in the color I'm thinking of...see link below from Richlite.com). With that kitchen as your inspiration and the ideas you have, I think you'll choose something great and I can't wait to see.

Here is a link that might be useful: Imagine this kitchen with the stainless on the back counter

Thanks for the additional info, Erika. I love what I've seen of Crown Point but I think it's not in the budget for me. Since I've only searched at Home Depot and Lowes so far, the brands I've looked at have been Kraftmaid and Thomasville, both in cream maple. I wish I could salvage my cabinets but boy they sure liked the knotty pine in the 50's, didn't they?

rhome, I would love to see a picture of your kitchen, especially the stainless on gray. Richlite is a product I haven't yet researched, so thanks for the tip. I'm leaning towards cream on gray right now. This means more trips to the paint store for 15 samples of gray paint(yes I am a little obsessive).

Thanks again for the responses.

Here are photos of my kitchen with the stainless on the gray. The gray doesn't photograph well, because it seems to come off either greenish or bluish, neither of which it looks like in person.