I had black stone bench tops at our old house. My kids would sit up at the bench whenever I was in the kitchen, so I was constantly cleaning off the little hand prints they left behind which seemed to be more obvious when light would hit the bench top, but it was easy to clean overall. Just moved into a house with a white corian bench top around the kitchen sink and stove area and it shows everything, every splash, bit of dust, tiny speck of whatever, everything. Makes me miss the black stone!

Congratulations on your new home! I personally favour an all-white interior, but I think it will also depend upon what you plan on doing with the ... colourful carpets. I'm not sure how they'd all look with white walls as they'd really be attention grabbers! I'd potentially start by painting the ceilings white - I personally, particularly don't like the darker ceilings in the bedrooms and blue hallway. I'd also potentially consider picking two or three of your favourite colours from the house (e.g. the hallway blue and bedroom green) and using fewer colours, but consistently throughout the house (instead of every room being a different colour). You could do all living areas in colour X and all bedrooms in colour Y. Good luck!

I would pick one of the colours out of the bricks. I think lighter rather than darker so the house doesn't look top heavy. When you factor in the whole cost of the extension, paying a colour consultant could be well worth the money. I have added a single story cladded extension to my brick house. The colour consultant was well worth the money. For me, I didn't want it to look like I was pretending the cladding was brick, so went for a colour that complemented the brick rather than blending in. A lot of new houses have cladding bumpouts included in the new build as a feature, I think this is a good look that you could go for. The extension as a feature rather than try to disguise it.

I love your bricks too. In fact I would repaint trim colours the same as they are.