To Etch or not to Etch

I have a tendency to etch my beads.  Etching can often brighten colours and help create a more distinct impression especially between colours of a similar shade.  It can sometimes soften colours as well (depending on the colour) and create that velvety beach glass look.  I can honestly say that etching has saved more than one set of beads that I've made that would otherwise have looked pretty blah.  But then again, glass is shiny and smooth and often transparent.  You loose these qualities when you etch glass and that is sometimes a bad thing.  The worst thing is that you can't always tell if etching is going to make a bead better or worse or pretty much even.  

This latest set of beads had some difficult choices for me.  I thought that I would etch all the beads but I liked some of them so much when they were shiny and that I just didn't have the heart to do it.  In the above beads, I only ended up etching 2 beads, the grey and orange bead and the transparent aqua bead.  I had an especially hard time deciding about the green bead.  Normally, I would etch a transparent bead like this in order to enhance the design work but the green is just so pretty (CIM Green Tea) that I couldn't bring myself to do it.  I also really liked the little bubbles that got caught in the glass while I was making the bead.  Below are 3 beads from this set before I etched them.

And then here they are in the set after being etched.  The bead with the orange stripe is the first bead at the top left, then the pale bead with the small orange dots is third from the left and the bead with the grey stripes is third from the right.

In this case, etching did improve the look of the beads.  The matte look helps make the designs stand out and gives some depth to the transparent dots on the pale bead.  I think that in this set, the mixed approach is working for me.  It also gives a bit of textural variation which I also like.  Well, no hard and fast rules but I'm thinking that if I really like a bead the way it is then I should probably leave it alone, otherwise, why not etch it?