I do like the idea of white stools, if you fancy painting the stools. I would personally paint the walls white and hang some bright coloured art (maybe with some yellow accents) - it will brighten the area. If you don't want to spend too much on the paint, either browse through the discounted section in B&Q and homebase, or buy cheap white paint (£4.00 for 5L homebase brand) and mix part of it with a paint tester of your choice for off white shade (like white + beige for lovely warm light shade of roman stone) - you're lucky to have such a lovely and well lit kitchen!

I like both, depending on their use. For sociability, the swivel are great. For writing or some other, more 'stationary' function, the stationary are it. The swivel is too much work to keep it stationary!

Depending on what colour your kitchen hardware is, there a couple of options that would work well in a graphite kitchen. If you have white worktops and a grey kitchen, I would add another colour or texture to the stools to create another layer to the scheme. If you don't like using bold colours, you could use an interesting textured metal or wood for the stools. You could try using something similar to the silver wire stools below for a more industrial style Or wooden stools are always lovely for a more contemporary country look. I would use a lighter wood, to add contrast to the dark grey kitchen and white worktop All the best with your project