I would go matt stainless steel, it will match any other silver or chrome in the kitchen (cupboard handles;tap; toaster etc). I've been looking at double bowl stainless undermount sinks and thought the Blanco essential U2 model was pretty nice (and about 788mm). good luck!

lucky you!! a metal fabricator should be able to polish the counters and/or advise on best method for DIY

Thanks Yvonne, It's a great product this one was selected by Mr Plywood Newcastle with a beautiful grain. We had a narrow white laminate board set back under it to give the shadow line, most certainly do it again cheers

Thank you everyone for your responses. I’m still undecided - I have a few weeks to consider what to do. The bench top salesperson showed me some photos of the few people who have added a small amount of benchtop stone to add some height (and it’s always because of a busy 60 x 30 patterned tile that the owners want to keep perfect) and in her words it looks ‘dicky’. Not least because the tile sits flatter against the wall than a 2cm thick slab of benchtop. It leaves a pronounced lip of 1.5cm where tile meets benchtop addition Then there’s the safety concerns mentioned above about flames near stone which I had not considered. Big reader - I love your maths but I’m only 150cm tall. Even with a low bench and oven height of 94cm (my oven’s lowest height setting) plus 70cm of tile between the bench and overheads, the cupboards are already 14cm above my head. This barely makes them usable for me even now! Adding another 15cm instead of the 10cm, while looking lovely and keeping the pattern intact, means my short-arse self will have real difficulty reaching anything safely. Every cm counts when you’re short! But I do appreciate your input!