Never ever buy polished and have it honed. If you want honed, you buy it honed from the quarry.

Well, I would look at it more as de-embellishing, but I know what you mean.

And it is true that we will have no idea what it will actually look like honed until it is done...

I will wait a little longer to see if we get any more responses...

I would want to know what the stone looked like honed beforehand. Honing it will change the way it looks. All the things you love about the stone you picked may go away with honing.

Someone posted here at Houzz that they purchased a couple of polished granite slabs with medium-level color variations similar to yours, sent them off somewhere to be honed, and they came back with the colors looking different, with gray tones brought out and a loss of depth of color. They then had the slabs re-finished back to a polish which brought them back to the original colors without the gray overtones and with restored depth of color. I'm sure changing the finish works for some people, but that particular poster was so unhappy with the alteration that the cost seemed worth it to restore the slabs back to the original polish.

such a pretty granite...no advice just wanted to say that i love the slabs!

It's beautiful! Leave it polished. It has so much more depth that way. Also, I'm not even sure you that you can hone an already polished stone?

I may be way off base on this, but aren't most people choosing honed black granite to get something similar to a soapstone look? Extrapolating from that idea my gut feeling is that this granite may end up looking like concrete when it is honed.