I am not trying to be "timeless" or "classic". I have tried to be true to my own contemporary aesthetic. I'm saving a bit of personality for the backsplash, which is on order and won't be installed for a couple of months.

When the last few bits are finished, I will also post pictures of the eating area, mudroom, and family room, which were all part of the renovation. Plus I'll add some before pictures and some pics of my favorite gadgets and accessories. For now, I'm just so excited that I had to share!

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. :)

We have 6 different under-cabinet and in-cabinet lighting 'zones' and didn't want the switch looking like mission control so our electrician found a similar toggle switch solution to what you saw in Cancun. Love it!

Also had him remote mount a switch panel (the lower stainless panel) for our vent hood so we can work the lights and blowers without reaching above the stovetop when it's on. Definitely over the TKO edge, but it is fun. :)

Also, they finally sent a piece of our told tile to World of Tile in NJ for a match, after trying to match it in all the local places they were used to dealing with. I knew 1954 peachy-pink was not something they were going to find in a local store, so I would have preferred they send the tile to WoT earlier, but once they finally did and got a match back, they were totally impressed! This was for a bathroom, but I'm sure the same would apply to kitchen tiles.

We used Aura satin finish on all of our baseboard molding (matching color to the walls). You can always use a glossier finish if you prefer--this was as glossy as we wanted to go.

The first picture is with no other lights on and you can see that they give off quite a bit of light. The whole island is lit up. They are on a dimmer, but that pic is with them on the highest setting. The second is with other lights on. And the third is just a close up because I wanted you to see that you cannot see the bulb inside but do get a lot of reflection on the outside of lamp.

We have 4 inches from the end of the counter to a piece of door trim. There is an outlet that is past the counter and long story but cannot be moved at this point (you'll see the pencil mark where I wish it could've been).
Ironically the tile is almost exactly the wall color, it's fairly thin, and color all the way through (it's a porcelain 3x12).

Contractor says in these instances he tiles all the way to the trimwork. I googled and saw someone suggest this solution to a poster with a similar issue.
Without moving the outlet, the only other solution is to tile around it which I think would look worse. By the time we did an edge piece it would leave such a skinny piece of wall between it and the trim.

I have kitchen reno exhaustion so checking whether I'm crazy to be ok with this solution?

Here is the overall kitchen, the area is the far left edge of the counter, next to the sunroom doorframe

Here is a closeup of the area. It's about 4 inches to the wall