Thank you so much davidahn. An electrician left a sample of LED UCL tape lighting for us to try. It's 2700K and it makes me almost ill to look at it. WAY too warm for me, so your thoughts on lighting in terms of color evaluation is very helpful.

I just read an article about this that may be helpful!
Choosing the correct colour is more about placing the paint colour or fabric or hard surface sample as close to the exact environment it will be live in.

That means, the paint colour should NEVER be laid ON the tile (people do that all the time).

Is that where the paint colour will go in the end? NO.

Stand the colour up against the wall vertically, your tile sample beside it on the floor, and your countertop sample right on it. If it all looks beautiful together together with the lighting and your chances of getting the colour to do what you want get much closer to perfection.

Here is a link that might be useful: Maria Killam on quartz colors

First of all, put your cabinet sample against a couple of white sheets of paper. What undertones does it have? If you aren't good at detecting undertones, then get some help from someone who is. Then do the same with the counter samples. If your cabinet color has yellow undertones, then go through and toss any counter samples that have a blue or green undertone. Warm tones look best with warm tones. The ones with yellow or red undertones are the finalists.

For the finalists, do make sure that you are using the lighting that you will use in the kitchen. Yes, go and buy some daylight bulbs and see what things look like then. And make sure that you are viewing the cabinet sample vertically and the counter sample horizontally.

If all of this fails, drink a bottle of wine and close your eyes, mix them up, and grab one! Then blame it on the wine. :)

Oh my gosh thank you so much. I read that blog all the time so how I missed that I'll never know. Thank you!

Good stuff! Thanx OP and GW responders!

I think OP knows this already but cloud white is a warm/yellow off white and her floor is warm as well. It's too bad Zodiaq cloud white is probably too blue because I like the idea of the sparkles in that with MOP. Blingy!

You do need to take your tile floor into consideration. The counter and floor are horizontal planes. You look across one and see the other. It looks professionally designed when they work together.

PS You probably did this already...

Here is a link that might be useful: Houzz

Had to respond to your message if only out of sympathy. I too have lost sleep over the kitchen. Then I feel a twinge of guilt because redoing my kitchen is a GOOd problem. Why am I so stressed.

I also am in Dante's fourth circle of Hell (countertop hell). I thought I would do quartz and after 100$ worth of samples decided I didn't like any of them and now am looking at granite.

I sometimes envy impulsive people who just pick something and have done with it.

I also am doing white cabinets with some cherry also.

Just one note on your actual topic. Don't think that these colors have to "match" your floor. Rather they simply have to coordinate or go well with it.

Have you picked faucets and knobs yet?

I, too, sympathize with the lost sleep over kitchen decisions. My warm copper painted walls make the lighting even weirder when I put those itsy bitsy frustratingly-small 4x4 samples up next to a painted board designed to mimic my cabinets. Seriously, I feel your pain. And just wait until it's time to choose faucets and hardware! I have the added stress of having a not-very-kitchen-reno-enthusiastic DH (he's on board just because he's tired of hearing me complain about poor function) so I don't have any help in the decision making process.

In the end, I had to shut my eyes and choose - I actually ended up going with a limestone look quartz (more pewter/taupey) because the white on white undertones were too much pressure. Now I have to own it so I almost can't look at other choices or I'll feel a pinch of regret. Sounds like your ah-ha is the backsplash, so just make sure you don't pick something too warm that clashes with the coolness of the MOP. You got some great advice on lighting - try that out and let us know what you decide. Then OWN it, girl! :)

"If all of this fails, drink a bottle of wine and close your eyes, mix them up, and grab one! Then blame it on the wine. :)"

LOL, now you're speaking my language!

Thanks again for the thoughts and help folks. It really is appreciated. As for Houzz, thank you for the link. I think I have most of those photos memorized!

Tricia257, nice to know I'm not alone here. I'm just so disillusioned. I though picking a countertop would be like picking a wedding dress where I'd just instantly know. I know that's how it works for some people, but alas, not for me.

We're keeping our existing faucet that we replaced five years ago or so and I have chosen pulls but not knobs yet. At least those things aren't as permanent as countertops in case I manage to screw that up.

If I missed this than please excuse this suggestion. Pipdog's kitchen has MOP backsplash with Madre Perla quartzite counter. It looks spectaular together.

What Green Designs said. Those of us who can choose our colours within half an hour aren't impulsive - we just know how to analyze and work with colour.

mother of pearl is hard to get right with quartz. the pearl has those sweeping/fan like strokes of texture. the quartz is small dots /speckles and nougats. there are numerous neutral shades in the pearl though. Looks like a light gray or buttermilk is the thing to blend with pearl,in an almost solid pattern.there are small glass mosaics and other mosaics that don't have that sweep in the pearl pattern which is giving iridescence and texture at the same time. I'd ditch the mother of pearl-it seems like a bathroom material anyway.

I'm feeling your pain as well and my eyes are drooping at this moment from house/kitchen remodel overload :(

I literally sat yesterday for probably 30 minutes staring at two supposedly different white (BM Swiss Coffee and White Dove) samples next to my granite choice and kept thinking that I couldn't even tell the difference. Then, I happened to look at the formulas on the Behr color matched sample containers and noticed that the formulas were EXACTLY THE SAME! I was ready to scream at that point and basically did an eeny meeny miney mo to choose the color!

I told my DH that I wish that I had a GC that would only give me 4 choices to choose from instead of the gazillions that I have and ironically, today, one of my good friends, who just moved into a brand new home, was complaining about only have 3-4 choices on her finishes!! It's definitely a no-win situation.

But, it'll all be worth it in the end of the madness.....hopefully! I haven't even begun the backsplash shopping yet!

Good luck to you!

OK, Stacey, that's just funny. I know the white paint struggle all too well. Three or four years ago itook white paint samples with me on vacation. That's when I knew I had a problem.

Cooksnews, I envy those who have a good understanding of color. I'm definitely getting better at it, but I don't think I have a brain that just gets it like some people do. I find that a lot of people who are good at art have a much better understanding of color, presumably because they've mixed enough paint to know what goes in to making a color and how to change it.

Ellen, thanks for the suggestion to revisit Pip's gorgeous kitchen. I believe her backsplash is actually onyx but the color palette is similar so things translate well.

I just wanted to tell you I am distressed that you feel your choice of white cabinets could cause flame responses! As a fellow white-kitchen person, I can tell you there are tons of white-kitchen fans here, and please do not feel your choice would be flamed.

When I chose my counter for my white cabinets, I started with looking at only granites that are in the white family. I also chose hand-made backsplash tile in a soft cream. What I found was that every granite sample I brought home (I think a dozen!) had some kind of issue with white-against-white-against-white. So in the end, I chose a darker counter, because the contrast with my white cabinets and cream backsplash was so much easier to work with. My granite (called Piracema) is not very dark; it's a swirl of pale grays, taupes, creams and some streaks of blue-black (think Pipdog's Madre Perla, then go about 4 shades darker, and more swirly). Have you thought about looking at counters that are not in the white family? Just my $.02, FWIW.

This post was edited by akchicago on Fri, Feb 8, 13 at 10:09

If you have that many samples, you won't be able to choose among them all easily, so take them in groups of 2 or 3 and pick the one you like best. Then make a new grouping and do it again. Eventually you'll whittle it down to the best choice.

I just wanted to circle back to again say thank you. There is so much good advice here and between that and the commiseration, I'm feeling much better this morning. I've also whittled my collection down considerably and already feel like I'm zoning in on the right counter. Just the process of ruling some out is a relief.

While I still think the starting point for these types of choices is to analyze the colours, there are definite decision-making strategies that can really cut down the time required (or wasted) when sorting through possible alternatives.

It doesn't matter whether you have 5, 20, or 100s of samples to choose from, you should only look at TWO (2) at a time. Pick up the first two pieces, and decide which you like best. The loser gets tossed into a reject pile, never to be looked at again. Pick up another, and compare it to the winner of the first two. Toss the loser, and pick up the next to compare to the current winner. Repeat until you have considered all the samples, at which time you will have determined the overall best choice. There is no point in ever revisiting any of the losers, as you have already determined that you like another better.

I learned this strategy from a friend who was moved around the country frequently by her hubby's employer, and she always had to shop for and buy a new house with only a few days of intensive searching. It really does work, not just for houses, or countertops, but even for shoes and eyeglasses - any time you are in a position of having to make the best choice among a number of alternatives.

First, don't take this as preachy, and if you do, know I'm also preaching to myself, as no one is as guilty as I of believing that only making the BEST choice will make me happy.

But psychologist Barry Schwartz (among others) claims that having FEWER choices leads to MORE satisfaction with the choice made. In other words, when you have 4 choices, you can be fairly certain you made the best choice. When you have 25 choices, you are likely to make a GREAT choice but be UNHAPPY because you can never be sure there wasn't a better choice: it's called "opportunity cost."

I read another study which I can't seem to find now that showed that decisions arrived at by gut feeling lead to more satisfaction than decisions made after extensive analysis. I have since tried to be in touch with my gut feelings when deciding. But I am prone like most GWers to overanalysis. Fight it!

Here is a link that might be useful: TED Talk - The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz

davidahn- interesting! Choosing whites was awful for me but WORSE was choosing a yellow for my cabs. I often wished I was just given a few choices but I was able to choose any paint color (BM or SW). I went through at least 200 yellows and when I'd narrow it down and still not be happy I'd start over. It really put me "over the edge". This went on for months. I thought I had picked the right one and then a month later realized it still wasn't right. I finally ended up with the right yellow for me but in the beginning it was one I kept putting in the NO pile immediately!! Next to the other yellows it just didn't look yellow! However, on it's own it's gorgeous and in a big space definitely reads yellow.

I'm glad I ended up with the right one but I'd NEVER want to go through that again. From time to time in certain lighting I still think, hmmm- maybe a little lighter/brighter/darker.... lol That's just my craziness!!

This post was edited by 2LittleFishies on Sun, Feb 10, 13 at 7:14

Davidahn, that sound spot on for me. I have this thing where I feel like I have explore EVERY option, just to satisfy myself that I've made the right decision. My mom always tells me how when they build their (custom) house in the 1960s, the contractor came to her and said, "we're tiling the bathroom today. Do you want yellow or blue?" And that was that.

I also remember how life felt simpler (notice I'm not saying better) before the Internet opened us up to options beyond what was available at local stores.

I completely agree with the bit about the gut feeling. I'm happy to report that I've had a strong gut feeling on the counter for the past several days but in my typical indecisive fashion I feel compelled to go back to the showroom tomorrow to pickup one more sample that I just to recheck.

wi-sailorgirl-- that's ME! I torture myself...

I'm in the middle of this, too. The quartz choice was awful, but I'm very pleased with the result. I have decided to put all paint color and backsplash design decisions on hold until the cabinets, counters, and lighting are installed and we have lived in the kitchen for about a week. It's hard to control myself, but our new lighting (LED) and the cabinet and counter colors are very different than what we had. I'm even rethinking my hardware choice and probably will test a couple of options for a week or so. I'm so glad we are in the home stretch!

Have you heard of the "satisficer" vs "maximizer" distinction? Short version in link below. Bottom line is that there are more maximizers on a forum like this!

Here is a link that might be useful: Satisficer vs maximizer

Interesting stuff. I adhere to the "pretty good" principle. I figure there is uncertainty in any decorating choice. A paint sample painted on the wall can't capture the effect of the whole room, and the same goes for any sample of counter, tile, or anything else. So given the uncertainty, the quest for perfection, or I guess more accurately, the optimal choice, is futile, since you'll only ever see your actual choice in situ.

So when I'm making choices, I try to narrow it down to a few pretty good choices, and at that point either I have a clear preference (which might or might not be optimal, but I'm confident it's pretty good) or I might as well throw darts. Usually I find I have a preference, but not always. My dining room walls are dark brown, and I had narrowed the choices down to maybe 5 or 6. And they were all fine (I'd gotten rid of the too purples, too burgundys, too oranges, and not dark enoughs). I'm sure I would be happy now with any of those 5 or 6, and I don't worry about whether one of them would be better than what I actually picked.

When I get in trouble is when I can't find choices I think are pretty good, which sometimes happens. Then I get frustrated because I'm trying to pick the best of a bad bunch.

Ha ha I have The Paradox of Choice book sitting right here! Excellent book. I'll be going through color-choosing very soon when we paint our cabinets lighter. I strongly believe having less to choose from is better. When we have entire aisles of toothpaste and shampoo in stores, less choice is the opposite of what we think we need. But less choice is main reason I no longer start with BM or SW for colors. Too much. I now go to the smaller boutique paint colors and start there.
It's exhausting to face the entire deck of color. I think this is more of a human psychology issue! Having said that, there are still the basic rules of color to follow though, which others have shared here. We can be happy having started with less choice.

I'm glad this is resonating with a lot of people.

The more choices there are, the smaller the difference between the choices (look how many off-whites there are!), resulting in smaller differences in satisfaction between one excellent choice and the next. Yet many mistakenly believe their happiness is all or none: ecstasy if you choose the best one, misery if you choose one of the 273 WRONG choices. And because of this incorrect thinking, you will always be miserable with ANY choice due to the nagging doubt that you may have picked a loser.

Re: satisficers vs. maximizers, since maximizers may make BETTER choices, but satisficers are HAPPIER with their choices, do you want to be unhappy with an excellent decision, or happy with a good decision? It really is your choice! Hence the wisdom of a gut feeling decision.

There's good data that shows our happiness has less to do with getting what we want and more with "synthesizing" happiness. Author Dan Gilbert says "a year after losing the use of their legs, and a year after winning the lotto, lottery winners and paraplegics are equally happy with their lives." What?!? He also shares studies that show that:
1. ownership with MINIMAL choice leads to satisfaction
2. being stuck with a decision leads to more happiness than having the option to change your mind
3. people think choice will make them happier but the reverse is true

It's fascinating research that completely contradicts the American dogma of "more freedom = more choices = more happiness," and the other dogma: "more = better." Check out the link; it's fascinating!

Here is a link that might be useful: Dan Gilbert - Surprising Science of Happiness

This is me, and why I cannot make a decision about cabinets--too many choices!!

I'm the person who used to go into a video rental place and come out an hour later with no video because I was completely overwhelmed by the choices. But given a choice of 4 or 5 TV channels (obviously I didn't have cable) and I could usually pick something (or reject everything and read a book). Now I have Netflix and having a DVD queue is great--I can put anything I want in the queue on a whim, but when I want to watch something I have at most 3 things to choose from. My "watch now" queue is another story, and I have taken to randomizing whenevery I can't make a decision.

Off topic with respect to kitchens; on topic with respect to making choices.

OMG.. I can so relate. I am getting major insomnia because I am so overwhelmed by design choices. Right now I am obsessing about backsplash tile. I actually tried to outsource some of this but the "color consultant" I hired made choices that I overrode. It did not help that our project had unusual architecture and materials which react differently to color. It took me a long while to trust my gut and not revisit decisions. If I do revisit decisions, then I have to remind myself to be gently with myself and give myself permissin to change it.

Isn't it interesting? What do they say? Thousands of channels and nothing good to watch, because of opportunity cost. But with streaming and queues, there's no opportunity cost (watching one show doesn't mean losing out on other shows), so therefore there's more satisfaction. If you make the wrong choice, you can always try again!

You mention randomizing. This kind of choice aversion isn't uncommon; why do you think the Urbanspoon and the Allrecipes app offer the option to simply shake your phone and get a random suggestion?

The saddest thing is that we have all swallowed the American Dogma (Larry Schwartz) wholesale, which virtually guarantees that we will have more stuff and be less satisfied and happy.

Have you seen the AT&T commercials that ask kids, "What's better, doing two things at once, or just one?" and they all say, "Two." When asked, "Are you sure?" One girl says, "I am absolutely positive," and a boy says, "It's two times as awesome." Voiceover says, "It's not complicated. Doing two things at once is better." These commercials make me sad, because it's this kind of brainwashing that will continue to make us busier and more isolated and less satisfied and happy.

Love this thread. Not only is it important for me personally, as someone who loves options (possibilities) and dislikes decisions (commitment closing off other possibilities), engaging in information overload leading to paralysis - it is important to us culturally/societally. I really appreciate you bringing these issues to light on this board, davidahn.

Here's to loving our choices!

Glad to be able to bring some perspective to those struggling with indecision (including myself!).

wi-sailorgirl, sorry for hijacking your thread. This was an epiphany I had while reading your thread that clicked for me in my own kitchen design decisions, so I thought I would get the conversation started.

I sort of found some gut instinct research I couldn't find earlier in the thread. It's called "heuristics," or simplified decision making. Examples of heuristics: rules of thumb, educated guesses, intuitive judgments (gut reactions or "first instincts"), common sense, and trial and error. I was interested to find that the concept of satisficing, mentioned above, was coined by Herbert Simon, a pioneer in heuristics.

Heuristics are not infallible and can lead you astray due to cognitive bias or faulty heuristics (if your rule of thumb is incorrect, for example), but if anything, analyzing a myriad of variables is MUCH more likely to lead to bias than heuristics, leading you to give greater weight to trivial factors due to personal biases or irrational fears. And research shows that decisions arrived at through gut reactions lead to more satisfaction than those arrived at through exhaustive analysis.

From my reading of GW Kitchen forum discussions, I'm led to believe GWers find higher than average satisfaction in their decisions. I don't believe this is due solely to objectively better decisions (though that is often the case), but rather due to the development of consensus opinion that gives people validation that their decision was indeed the right one. Another significant factor is that renovations and large appliances are near-irreversible decisions, which often leads you to "adopt" the decision and become satisfied with it. Hence the CC vs. BS flame wars (no pun intended) in the appliance forums!

No worries on the hijacking. This thread ended up way more interesting than it started and got to the crux of the matter, even if I didn't realize that's I was really asking.

The consensus thing is interesting and so right on. I am constantly looking for validation for my choices. I consider this to be a character flaw and I'm trying to change my ways. So the way I deal with things is to not tell anyone what our decision is (well other than a few people like the friend who has been weighing in on design decisions for years and people who I know will nod politely even if they hate it). It is easier for me to be all confident and take on the attitude of "it's my kitchen and therefore the opinions of my DH and I are the only that matter" when I've not opened myself up to hearing negative comments (real and perceived) about our choices. The second I hear something negative it takes a little joy out of it for me. Like I said, it's a character flaw.

That's why I don't ask for opinions on GW unless I REALLY want to know the good the bad and the ugly of it. Because people here are honest. That's a good thing, by the way, because it's the kind of honestly you won't get from the "oh that's nice" nodders and sometimes you really need that.

You'll notice, for instance, that I never came back to this thread to mention what the decision actually was or to report that I did make one (thankfully just a few days after starting this thread so I could move on with my life). People here tend to be much more positive when they see a kitchen finished not only because they see the whole vision completed but also because they realize that it's not changing now so there is no need to say anything but positive comments (that reaffirm those pesky decisions). The nightmare: a finished kitchen post that only gets a handful of comments because you know people are doing the whole "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything." And of course that's when you wish you had asked for some truthful opinions while you were making the decisions.

Sailorgirl, that was a lot of insight!

Sometimes having dissenting opinions (different, not necessarily negative) can be as useful as positive feedback. In the case of my new kitchen layout, I'm doing a couple of things that go against the grain here, and several people told me so. But having lived in the kitchen for 24 years, and knowing how we use it and where we'll put things when it's done, my ideas made sense to me.

Admittedly, when I first got suggestions for changes (some of them significant), I immediately grabbed my graph paper and tried to incorporate the suggestions into my plans! But every change meant that I had to move or eliminate something that I really wanted, and had put in place for a reason. Your comment about "the whole vision" was spot on. My needs trumped the conventional thinking, and I ultimately am even more satisfied with my layout.

Which isn't to say that I didn't value, appreciate, and carefully consider the input I got from GW! I did make some changes after coming here - like changing all my base cabs to drawers. For me, being challenged (in a helpful way) forced me to defend (to myself) my decisions, and carefully consider WHY I wanted things the way I had them.

I've been agonizing over quartz colors for 3 months; if there were more photos of finished kitchens with the quartz colors it would be so much easier to envision.

I did find that the Dupont web site has a room designer that lets you upload a photo of your kitchen, outline the surfaces, and see the countertop color, floor and wall colors in your kitchen.

In the end I chose a neutral (Dupont Lunar Pearl) to go with my honey hickory cabinets, a white subway tile backsplash with a border of small different colored (neutral) marble mosiacs. Just ordered everything, will post photos afterwards.

Here is a link that might be useful: Dupont Room Designer

FlowerPower, how do you like the zodiaq lunar pearl? I'm considering that color also. Do you have any photos to share? Thanks!