My unlacquered solid, polished brass kitchen pulls have darkened in 9 months. I'll probably rake the off when I leave town for a ,onto and gave them repolished and lacquered. I like my metal shiny!

I have ORB knobs in my kitchen and you can tell which ones get the most use because they show more brass. Doesn't bother me a bit, but if you like perfection, a living finish isn't for you. I have polished nickel hardware in two of the bathrooms. It has softened to a lustrous, but not shiny, greyed silver tone. I think I would prefer the shininess of chrome. My stone finishes all look unchanged except for some hard water deposits in one shower that need to be polished out. Most of these finishes are 15 years old.

When we bought our house I used orb for all my cabinet hardware, kitchen faucets, doorknobs and front door entry. I absolutely hated the living finish. The frequently used knobs were dark and the ones used the most showed brass. I hated the inconsistency and they always looked dirty to me. We just redid the kitchen and I put in chrome faucets and hardware and switched all the doorknobs to glass knobs with chrome backplates. I love the shininess!

When I built almost 9 years I made the decision to use ORB~door hinges, handles, and all plumbing fixtures. However, I feel it's ok to mix it up and maybe do a kitchen in a different finish if the urge strikes. There are NO rules that can't be broken.

Are most orb finishes plated? For all living materials I use can be polished, or in wood's case refinished, back to their orginal shine with a little bit of elbow grease and why I love them is they do not show water spots with every use as my chrome fixtures do. I believe living finishes look real and presentable without constant wiping unlike plated brush nickel or chrome metals.

I think of orb as a plated finish in most cases , like 70s brass is, and as such the wear is the plate falling off because it is fake. A real living finish, although organic in appearance if left unpolished can always return to its orginal shiny perfection with polishing. This is true of even marble.

The term "living finish" is new to me, but I love hearing that there is a new trend to accepting the signs of normal use and aging on quality surfaces--and of routine polishing and maintenance when the mood hits. Of course, as Roarah says, this does require sustainable materials.

Btw, I recently purchased an incredibly corroded and pitted brass floor lamp at a community fundraiser for $2 because it was a useful little size and had pleasing lines, and because it was a fundraiser. :) It was late in the day by then, and somehow I doubt the owner would have bothered taking the piece of junk home.

In any case, it was never an expensive lamp and seemingly not solid brass, though not thin plate, so I took it home as an experiment--a quick, easy one since replating is expensive and out of the question for this. I used rough sandpaper, turned horizontally around the shaft, to remove the mess and replace it with shiny brass with a horizontal striae pattern. Took me 10-15 minutes to do it carefully. Then I coated it against oxidation. Looks nice (in an interestingly untraditional way for those who actually look at it), and its new life could last another several decades with a little care.