Sorry, I completely misunderstood your post. I thought you meant a transition piece between the two floors (ie, schluter, t strip molding). Don't grout that joint between the two floors. It needs to be caulked if you go that route. Otherwise, the difference in expansion/contraction between the two materials will cause the grout to crack. As far as grout color, look at lots of pictures. I would think you'd lose a lot of the beautiful herringbone pattern if you tried to match the dominant color. The tones of the two floors are very similar, so they already connect on that level. I don't think you have an issue of transitioning in terms of grout color. I guess the more natural selection for a wood look would be a little darker than the main color, like a shadow between the boards. A lighter color or a gray will look more like a tile floor with grout. I wouldn't do something lighter, as in peachy. You can kind of see what it would look like lighter right now. The higher the contrast you have with the tile will affect how busy or pronounced the floor pattern will look. Maybe you could cut strips of colored construction paper to lay over the joints to see what appeals to you more. You've got some variation in the tile colors, but when you use a grout color that matches the flooring, the floor becomes one big solid mass of color. Here is a link that might be useful: herringbone tile pictures This post was edited by snookums2 on Thu, Aug 8, 13 at 23:15

I think you could do tile and wood and have them transition nicely from one to the other. Here's some picts I found of transitions. The first one shows a nice way to transition tile from room to room by running in different directions: If you want to do it all tile, you can definitely find a tile designer to help you. Tiles don't have to be square, they can be brick, random, etc. And they can design the rooms to fit together nicely. If you really want tile in your kitchen, I'd start at the tile store and let them help you. I understand your concern. If you went to my relative's house, you'd wonder what they were thinking with their flooring. They have an open floor plan with 6'x 5' slate entryway, berber in the cove on the left, cherry in the dining area on the right, fancy embossed carpeting in the family room in front which flows into the white vinyl floor in the kitchen which meets a back hallway with ivory vinyl which meets the cherry dining area and then meets a mudroom with grey indoor/outdoor carpeting. Seven different floors in one big room! The home is only 10 years old and was designed this way. DH and I were amazed when they had five different floors and 'bout lost it when they added the cherry. The embossed carpet put us over the top. Every time we go there we're hoping there's a new floor to look at ;-) We're really not that snobby. The variety just really peaked our interest. My husband had me paged at work when he saw they had a #7. He was so excited to tell me about it. lol The link below is a wood transition, but I could see an inlaid wood design flowing nicely into tile too. Here is a link that might be useful:

Can you transition from wood to vinyl planks? Is it possible in an open floor plan? Time is not an option. Or need something not as hard as tile, considered cork as well all but can't find what's best yet. Thanks

Could you do wood on the staircase? Our guest house has a basement. We used wood look tile on both floors and connected them with a site finished wood staircase. The hardwood guy stained the stair treads to match the wood look tile. The riser and trim were painted white. I don't think anyone has ever noticed they are different materials. I would not want carpet on my staircase.