It has to be a color that I find appetizing. I prefer pinks and reds for some reason.

I have a very dear friend and she says she has to imagine the plate with liver and broccoli being served on them. I suppose if they make those foods look good, they pass muster.

I briefly had stoneware and did not like it's thickness. It also chipped very easily and out it went.

We are more mug users here, and I found men didn't like the hand feel of the mugs that came with my everyday dishes. I replaced them with clear glass hot beverage mugs from a restaurant supply which pleased DH's coffee drinking friends.

I love beautiful dishes and can get lost in the china section of a department store very easily. But - when it comes to actually buying them, for me and not for a shower or wedding gift, I lean to total practicality. I have to be able to get replacements if necessary. They must not overheat in the microwave or require hand washing. With the number of people we have coming and going from this house, they have to be durable and survive trips to patio or even garage. I bought the Bistro in a little bit of a rush, I needed several place settings and right away. We'd been moving gradually since coming from just a few blocks away, but made our real move and spent our first night here two days before Thanksgiving that year. The plain white Bistro hasn't let me down. Which isn't to say I don't continue to look at or enjoy more colorful place settings from time to time.

Also, one of DH's sisters is a total china junkie and her things are beautiful. I wouldn't embarrass her by listing all she has. She's generous, lives within walking distance, and I can borrow.

My friend always said picture it with a sunny side up egg on it and if you still like it, you like it.

I see LOTS of dishes I like but I always end with white. I had plain white corelle and switched over to some stoneware type...white of course. But they are heavy and they chip like crazy. I think it would be fun to get 1 place setting each but different patterns or colors.

I totally get the tea thing...I drink a very small cup of coffee and I prefer a smaller mug vs a big ol' giant mug. Actually a tea cup would work better for me for my coffee...but is that bad ju-ju to drink coffee out of a tea cup?? LOL

No. A china cup is not necessarily only for tea. Your ju-ju is just fine! :-)

I really like the white porcelain, I have a few pieces just for myself and DH. I have another set (complete) that we bought many years ago, still occasionally use it. It's a Southwestern pattern in stoneware and I still have all of it with no chips or damage but I honestly don't use it that much. If there was some reason why I decided to buy a new set it would be the white but NOT SQUARE PLATES!!! I HATE SQUARE PLATES!!! If I get served a meal at a restaurant on a square plate I actually get angry. Don't ask me why, I can't explain this quirk for the life of me.

I can't that's the problem. I seem to prefer the eating surface to be plain. I do like the tea cup or mug to have some style. For my Christmas every day china I have purchased two of any pattern that strikes me. There are just sooo many and I love the look of the variety on my table. Like a tree with its Christmas bulbs.

I love all of the ones posted Anglo. However, dishes are the least important thing to me. My current set is plain white china that I purchased at Home Goods.

We are definitely mug users here. We have a collection of Dunkin Donuts mugs. DH likes the handle to be nice and wide. I am two mugs that were given to us by a friend. One has yoga poses (was for DH)but I use it for my morning coffee and the other is an Ellen Degeneris mug which I use for tea.

The color and pattern are important to me because I'm a visual creature. I like earthy tones like blue, green, brown, rust and cream. For patterns, I must have simplicity. A simple stripe around the rim or a subtle geometric pattern is the kind of thing I like. Florals can be nice if they are understated.

Shape is important too. If the rim is too large or the plate too deep it can be more like eating from a bowl than a plate. I like bowls that have a lip around the rim to catch drips and spills so that they don't land on the table. Salad plates need to be large enough to hold more than a wedge of lettuce.

As far as cups go, I'm a tea drinker, but I'd rather drink my tea out of a mug than a tea cup mainly because cups don't hold enough for me. I'm constantly refilling them whereas a large mug can keep me going all afternoon simply by reheating the tea in the microwave. I know, I'm a barbarian!

Lastly, any dishes that live in my house have to be able to survive a trip through the dishwasher. I don't hand wash dishes, period. Exceptions might be something like a large platter or bowl that takes up too much room in the dishwasher.

I love many different china patterns, but don't want food served on anything but white. I have a variety of mugs for coffee (never drink tea or use teacups), but the interiors must be white. I really dislike drinking out of a cup with a dark interior.

My biggest gripe is glasses with a rolled edge. I want a thin edge, even for my water glasses.

Shape is important to me too, although I'm not into just ONE shape. They have to have cups and saucers not just mugs for I drink only out of a cup and saucer unless it is cocoa. Quality is another factor -- they have to be of good quality (no Dollar Store stuff for me -- just too cheaply made in China). And I also think that they need to look good in your room -- if you have orange walls hopefully your dinnerware is not pink and black! Which is why I think there is so much white out there -- looks good in ALL rooms . . . but then I think that too of my beloved blue and white.

I LOVE your tea cups! I might actually use tea cups, if I had some THAT PRETTY! But I have a HUGE mug, with a M on it, and love the size. Prior to finding it, I would make a pot of tea, set it on a warmer that is used with a tea light, and refill my cup till the pot was empty. My tea pot is all white too (porcelain) , but of course, not corelle.. they don't make one.

Moni

I have to like the pattern. I also don’t care for a plate with a huge rim, leaving a tiny space in the middle for all the food in a little pile. I also am one that tries to envision what something like a fried egg or pasta sauce will look like on the plate. Good quality is important too.

After looking at dishes all over the place, I just ordered the Sur La Table Bistro dishes. They are plain white. I like a plate with a rim, not the coupe style. I did not order the matching mugs. I like to buy nice big mugs. I could not find a pattern I liked in a color that matched my kitchen. Every pattern is blue. I don’t like cups and saucers, although my betterchina has them so if I feel like a tea party I.m all set.

I fall in love with patterns and colors. I prefer porcelain to stoneware. I'm particularly fond of holiday china as that's when we do a lot of entertaining. I love porcelain made in England before the china industry died, but I enjoy using Pottery Barn/Williams-Sonoma designs, too, even though they are decals and are not hand-painted.

Colors/patterns have to be cheerful and mugs have to be large and easy to hold. And the dishes must be sturdy. And I prefer made in USA or Europe, not China.

Color, color and more color. Love my Fiesta ware!

Color is important to me as is the weight and shape, most of the stoneware out there is too heavy for my liking and a finer set wouldn’t survive my DH. I’m not into prints per say but usually lean towards blues, greens and yellows because they are happy. Our current dishes are solid in color in blues and greens but they’re just the cheap, flat style from Ikea. Sadly, that’s all that will fit properly in our dishwasher. The problem with using dishes that I actually like and can offer a little style, (and I’ve tried several) is that literally nothing fits. It’s 13 years old and I’m just waiting until it finally dies so it, as well as my cheap Ikea dishes can be replaced.

I am thinking of buying new dishes sometime this year. I've had the same set (actually two sets) of off white Corelle Hearthstone dinnerware for about 12 years. Only one sandwich plate has been broken. Most of the mugs have never been used. The dishes I do like though, are ridiculously expensive. I don't want Corelle any more. I like southwestern patterns, but not tacky patterns. I saw some dishes in Walmart the other day and said, "who would put those on their table?" they were so ugly. I do like dishes with no pattern at all too. No pattern goes with anything.

I know when I touch them if they are right for me. I used to mix and match my dishes because no set had everything I wanted or needed.

I am a sucker for interesting, quaint shapes. I think my taste for china was formed when I was in 7th grade and helped my aunt and grandmother unpack barrels of old family china that had been packed away since grandmother's early years as the bride of a parson who moved from assignment to assignment in small Illinois towns. The barrels contained various family sets and special pieces of Haviland Limoges bone china. I loved it for all the interesting shapes of pitchers and sugar bowls.

dedtired, I think you'll love the Bistro - mine are serving me well.

When I ordered my sets 5 years ago, a couple of the pieces arrived broken. I called, disappointed. Customer service asked me which had been damaged, and said they would immediately ship replacements. They asked me to throw away the broken pieces and to not handle them any more than necessary, they didn't want me cutting myself. They absolutely did not want me to try to box broken porcelain to return. I hung up laughing, and told DH I wished I'd said all the dinner plates (18) were shattered since they wanted no proof at all ;0) (and yes, of course I'm just kidding). As it was, I'd lost a couple of the mugs in transit, they were immediately replaced on just my say so.

Uh oh, hope mine arrive in one piece. We have a SLT store at the mall and I could have bought them there but thought it would be easier to have them arrive at the door rather than schlep them home.

The only place I like color is on the border. I prefer white dishes because for me the food is the only "art" that matters. Food no matter how carefully plated never looks as appetizing to me on a patterned plate.

I also dislike heavily rimmed plates that leave a tiny flat area for the food. Cup and saucer rim is fine but leave my dinner plate alone.

I guess that's why I am not much of a China or stoneware person and love my several sets of Corelle. Lightweight, stack well and fit any dishwasher. I am also more apt to eat my meals off the luncheon sized plates for portion control.

In the early years of our marriage, DH's folks lived near Iron Mountain Stoneware in the beautiful hills of Tennessee. Every time we visited, we'd drive to Laurel Bloomery to the factory store. The 'seconds' were cheap, the flaws so tiny or so charming that we loaded up with them every visit. We splurged on 'first' quality pieces once in a while also. We have pieces of every pattern, except their last (darn!), along with more full sets of Blue Ridge and White Top. It's heavy stuff but very durable. I value that each piece was touched by local hands as it was made. It all says "home" to me.

And I have six corelle plates because they are so light and durable; donated their matching cups and bowls ages ago because they were too insubstantial.

I love to gaze upon all varieties of china, but for my own everyday, I like an undecorated eating surface. I like my everyday to kind of go with my kitchen and look nice on my placemats. I also like eating off of my golden-yellow Longchamp Argent plates, it makes me happy. I love them on my red plaid placemats in my yellow, grey, white kitchen with red and painted porcelain accents.

I also need dishes that aren't too heavy, that stack well but not too closely (our Corelle coups stack too closely, the rimmed Longchamp gives room to easily pick one plate from the stack). Fit in the dishwasher of course.

I prefer mugs and they do not have to match the dishes, but it is easy to find mugs that coordinate well with almost anything.

Bowls is a big issue! The mass-produced sets seem to have bigger bowls, and no variety in sizes. They are like the blue mixing bowl in the 4-piece set of Pyrex, know what I mean? Too big for cereal and ice cream and pudding, not wide enough for soup. Great for popcorn. In my first apartment I got two sets of Arcoroc bowls 4 small and 4 a bit bigger, and they are our go-to bowls for the last 40 years! Except soup and stew, for those I like using my two Campbell's Soup bowls or the Longchamp's soup plates.

My niece gave me this mug and I loved it so much I looked online and got 5 more - all a different bird and one that is a butterfly. They are so cheery to use for my coffee (or tea, I like both) each morning. It holds 16 oz.

I don't drink coffee, so cups aren't very important to me, but I do have several of the old McCoy dark brown mugs with the drip glaze. I drink hot tea once in awhile, and I always use a certain little cup and sauce and teapot. As for dishes, I use old restaurant ware, and my favorite ones are with a pattern or logo. I don't care if they match or not. If I have company for a meal, the emphasis is on the food, not the dishes, but I have loved seeing the beautiful table settings posted here. It's just not something I would do.

Besides the restaurant dishes, I have. Several sets or partial sets of china, but they are packed right now. My favorite has roses and a gold filigree trim. I have a complete set. I bought it when I bought a bunch of stuff out of an old house in Galveston. They were selling a bunch of stuff in the basement. Including two big stained glass windows. All for $100.

Well I'm late to the thread but Anglophilia your china all 4 patterns is stunning! I particularly like that first blue and white pattern. You must set a beautiful table!

Cheap and nice looking. I like mugs, they are a mixed bunch that I bought in stores and liked them. I have a couple from exchange students we've had.

I like a lot of different things, but the most important thing is that the pattern not be so busy that when you wash them you can not see small bits of stuff stuck to them ( like egg yoke)

I choose by feel, by weight (hate heavy dishes), how they fit in the hand for bowls and cups/mugs; by the finish (I've noticed that a certain type of very shiny glaze on less expensive brands chips very easily -- and I prefer a slightly matte finish anyway). I tend to like more of an embossed or subtle tone on tone pattern, with a few exceptions of course! The color is important too. I like aqua in décor items, for example, but not to eat off of.

Anglophilia, that Adams "Blue Shamrock" is the set that my mother gave me, that I had declined. I love the colors, I like the checkerboard like design, and the embossing of the pottery, but I have to admit the tiny shamrocks bother me. One of those little quirks.

For every day dishes: 1) Timeless 2) Unusual enough not everyone has it 3) lots of accessories. ie: casserole dishes, mixing bowls, salsa platter, mugs

Mugs/cups: I like a large, double walled ceramic mug for tea or inka, with a travel lid. If I need to go pick up something, leaving the house quickly I can take it with me/stays hot longer(it takes me a couple of hours to drink one of these). I just purchased a case of 10 of these mugs. $1ea. I have a blue Yetti handle for them.

Now that I think of it, I don't think I've ever had a colored or patterned dishes. Even the set I picked for my bridal registry were white. Mikasa French Countryside.

https://www.macys.com/shop/product/mikasa-dinnerware-french-countryside-collection?ID=555646&CategoryID=74035#fn=sp%3D1%26spc%3D23%26ruleId%3D78%26searchPass%3DmatchNone%26slotId%3D1

We had looked for some time and the only patterns we could agree on were the ones we both disliked. We happened to be at a wedding in New Hampshire for a cousin of my wife, at least a year after we got married and went to a store while there. Maybe to buy a last minute gift, maybe because one of our bags didn't make it to our destination, I forget why. But we went down an aisle with some Sakura brand stonewear and both commented that we liked one of the patterns, and then joked that we should buy it and figure out how to get it home on the plane, and then decided to actually do that.

We also bought an expandable rolling suitcase that perfectly fit the boxed set of dishes. After the wedding when we were flying home, because the bag was too large to carry on, we slapped a couple "Fragile -- Handle with Care" stickers and checked the bag -- hoping, but not really expecting that it would come through undamaged.

In the end not a single dish was chipped or cracked.