Hi,
I'm new here and looking for help findling the right granites for our new kitchen and bathroom. Our new house is still under construction, and we are in the planing stage. The kitchen and bath vanity cabinets will be custom-built by a known carpenter, and the plan is to have granites as countertops for both areas.

Kitchen:
It will be located in the shady corner of the 1st floor. The whole 1st floor is planed to have the black-brown color of smoked or stained oak (they will actually be tiles with genuine wood look) in the format of large wood planks laid in parallel to give it the look of wood floor. Therefore, I plan light colors for the kitchen. The wood cabinets will be in plain country style with framed beadboard door facing stained in antique-white color. The color I plan for the granite countertop is beige or golden with even movement or fine, small crystals evenly scattered over the whole slab. The choice to go with beige / golden is to match the colors combination of the kitchen with other colors we will have in its surrounding since the 1st floor is going to be open-plan with the kitchen open to the dining and living area.

What I take into consideration for my granite choice is also the low absorbency rate, despite the planed annual sealing that I can do myself. However, this seems to be the problem with most of the light-colored granites with fine crystals in their structures. Many of them I looked at have high absorbency rate for moisture and stain.

And that is where I need some help here, to find the right granite in the color beige or golden for my new kitchen countertop :-)

Bathrooms vanities:
The cabinets in planing are to be the same color, antique-white, and style as the new kitchen cabinets with slight modification to add stands to them to raise their bases high enough away from the floor to avoid moisture and for convenient cleaning of the floor area underneath them. The granite countertops are planed to hold white sinks and give space for putting essentials things on them.

I plan our new bathrooms to be in maritime or beach house style, and therefore the colors chosen are white and navy-blue. The whole bathrooms from floor to ceilings will be covered with tiles with the look of long, white-stained or white-washed wood panels laid in horizontally to create the feel of a beach house bathroom. Navy-blue tiles will be used scantly, just to add some accent to the overall-white bathroom. The planned antique-white cabinets, for example, will be placed in front of a small wall area below the mirror that will covered with navy-blue tiles.

The granite color I plan for the bathroom countertops are therefore in the white or light-grey shades. I also would like a granite with low absorbency rate for stains and moisture, despite the annual resealing I plan. I do know that I cannot have a very all-white granite as granites normally come with crystals in their structures, else I could go with white marble with little pattern. It suffices me that I find a granite for the bathroom countertops that will overall appear white or light-grey. Also, to get something too white without any structure or pattern also brings the risk that the white of the countertop will not give enough contrast or unappealingly blend too much with the planed white sinks. I would not like to use marble at all, despite their beauty, because I prefer the higher degree of robustness and durability of granites to those of marbles.

And that is my 2nd question here, to find the right granite that overall appears white or light-grey with low absorbency rate for my bathroom countertops.

Thank you very much in advance and blessings,
H-C