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!

I have lived in two places with breakfast bars in American style kitchens. I found that I tended to spend a great deal of time sitting there so a bar stool with a comfortable back is important. I made mine from pine, copied from some I saw in a bar. I was also given an old captains swivel seat from a yacht so I built a stand for it, reupholstered it and unfortunately left it for the new tenant who liked it. That was one of my favourite seats, to sit in comfort at a breakfast bar rather than balancing without a back to lean on.

A Swedish company does this style which can be customised by colour, see below photo