Your faucet
choices will be widely varied, with finishes 
such
as brass, chrome, nickel…even copper! You'll also find a vast
assortment of styles. What you'll pay for a faucet depends on two
elements: how the faucet works on the inside, and the style and finish
on the outside
Most kitchen
faucets feature a washerless design inside, which involves either
plastic or ceramic discs moving against each other to control the flow
of water. The discs may or may not be enclosed in a cartridge.
Plastic discs have holes in them that control the flow of water by
moving back and forth to let the water through the aligned holes when
the handle is turned on.
You should not
have difficulty fitting your faucet choice to your sink selection, but
you will want to make sure your sink has extra holes if you choose a
side spray or soap dispenser. You will need to make sure your faucet
spout can reach far enough within your sink bowl(s)—especially with
double and triple sinks. Tall goose-neck spouts can make pot filling
easier. Sprayers (either the kind that pulls out of the faucet, or the
kind mounted on the back rim of the sink) can be a real helper with food
prep and clean up.
Standard kitchen faucets have separate handles for hot and cold
water. From a pricing standpoint, domestic, chrome-plated faucets are
the least expensive. You'll move into mid-range pricing with domestic
plated or epoxy-painted faucets with an anti-scald mechanism. And, at
the high end, you can get designer models, either imported of domestic.
Single–lever faucets are easy to operate with one hand. The better
lever faucets hold the flow rate constant without fine adjustment on
your part. Cheaper ones tend to drift to higher or lower flows. On the
low end of the price scale you'll be able to get a domestic,
chrome-plated faucet. Domestic plastic or epoxy–coated models with an
anti-scald valve fall into the middle range. And top–of–the–line
selections include both imported and domestic designer models.
The least expensive finish is polished chrome, also generally
considered the most durable kitchen faucet finish. A new finishing
technology called Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD) now allows polished
brass to be considered as a durable finish option for the kitchen.
Specialty finishes such as nickel and copper are choices available for
higher-priced faucet models.