Kitchen countertops are changing. Moving away from high-maintenance granite and marble, more designers are turning to composite materials made of crushed stone bonded with resin. Whenever she has a client who does a lot of cooking and entertaining, Elyse Parkhurst, who with her business partner Caitlin Flynn, forms the design team at North Fork Design Co., recommends doing the kitchen islands and countertops in engineered stone.

“Concerning the difficult question of color, once wrote Edith Wharton, it is safe to say that the fewer colors used in a room, the more pleasing and restful the result will be.” More than a century  later, the question remains as vexed and contentious as ever. No wonder so many of us take refuge in the comfort of neutrals, those reassuring earth tones that are the equivalent of a soothing murmur.