1) IMO a bright white knob on an off-white surface can make the off-white look grungy. We are having that problem in this house.

2) I am confused about whether you are replacing every door in the house? (Sorry, I can't parse "remodel addition of the whole house".) If not, use the same style doors as you have in the rest of the house for consistency so you don't have one part of the house screaming "addition".

3) What style is the house? A three-panel Craftsman style door would look peculiar in a center-hall Colonial, for example.

The thingies over your doors are called "door/window caps".

johnmari - our house was built in the 60's, 1 level ranch, it's just plain boring. We will be replacing all the doors and trim in the original, right now they are flat stained birch with plain narrow trim. A few years back we finished off the basement, I used 6 panel doors with wider trim painted a since discontinued SW white and I love the look.

Then I saw the movies Something's Gotta Give and What Lies Beneath and loved the looks of both those houses, both of those houses the look interior I would like to achieve. Simple but nice. I was searching for online pics of the SSG movie and that's how I came across the GW site. I've seen so many great ideas here, I'm waiting too see a few pics of "white" kitchens that will soon be done. What I have now is birch...kind of scary to switch to white, but those are the ones I'm really attracted to. I'm hoping to have the doors and trim to look right with a white/soapstone/wood floor kitchen! I also would like to add cove molding to the dining and living room areas and maybe be really brave and paint the ceiling a color other than white. All this planning can really give a person "brain-fog".

I have the Emtek Quincy 7" backplate and the Old Town (crystal) knobs on all doors in oil rubbed bronze, except the exterior doors, which have the 9" Quincy back plate in ORB and the Providence (solid metal) knob (also in ORB). I have all wood doors - upstairs I have shaker style (flat panel) doors (one large square up top with two vertical rectangles on bottom, if that makes sense) and downstairs I have exterior doors that are flat panel as well and two random doors that are 5 panel colonial (a closet door and a bath door downstairs). It's not as noticeable a mixture as it appears to be as I type it out!! In any event, the Entek crystal knobs are so pretty and bring a nice element of light relection into the rooms. I really like the crystal knob over the white porcelain, for cleaning too. But i think the black porcelain knob with the pewter could be very sharp.
I don't have any photos, but if I can take some and upload I will... I don't think you can go wrong with Emtek, though - nice knob sets and I just ordered the new "thumbturn" privacy sets for upstairs - they are awesome! You can lock the door from the inside with an actual thumbturn mechanism and you can open the door from the outside with a coin, as opposed to the privacy knob sets that have a small hole in the exterior knob that you can only open with a special tool... They look "vintage" and are really nice, IMO.

I haven't seen "What Lies Beneath" and found Jack Nicholson's character in "Something's Gotta Give" too distractingly irritating to really notice the decor (maybe I need to watch it again with the sound off! LOL), so I can't really help you with specifics there. :-) Since you've got a simple ranch, I would keep the doors very simple too. I can easily see a Shakerish two-panel or even a single panel to echo your cabinetry, unless you're going very fussy with your new moldings which I think would be incompatible with your architecture. Because they're all on a different floor mixing in the six-panel style isn't as big a deal, although that's one of the very few things I do have a bit of a fetish for consistency about... PO put an addition on our house and used six-panel doors when the rest of the house has four-panel, and I think they just scream "addition". (Thankfully there are some of the old four-panel doors in the shed so we can swap them out eventually. Why he didn't use those instead of buying new doors is beyond me, considering how cheap he was on everything else!) I did go dig up some pictures of the SGG set and noticed a lot of use of French doors - would you consider using French doors (singles) on rooms that don't require privacy?

Oh, and if you know the name of that discontinued SW paint, they'll almost certainly have the formula for it in their computer.

Just for giggles, I'm daydreaming about a (partially) white and (faux) soapstone kitchen too, although it's much warmer... I've linked to pictures that have been serving as inspiration for said daydreams below. I don't know whose kitchen it is, it's probably from a magazine, but someone gave them to me a couple of years ago.
{{!gwi}}
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Unless we win the lottery, mine'll be Ikea and Formica instead of custom and soapstone, but I think it'll still get the point across.

BTW, you don't need a special tool to open the privacy knob sets that have a hole in the knob. We've always just used a nail or a bobby pin... in fact, in the houses where I babysat, the parents usually kept a nail on the top of the door casing because their mischievous little monstersoffspring ;-) would lock themselves into various rooms!

johnmari, the "cap" is what I was talking about. Love your "daydream" kitchen. If I had extra money laying around I would add an on 4 season porch off our living room with the glass doors, I do love that look. At Christmas I can see the tree sitting out in the porch, not taking up so much room in the LR.

kaypeakay, I wish our lumber yard had the sample of the black or the brown porcelain knobs. I do like the look of ORB but I would prefer the pewter or nickel look.