re: Pine needles, hay, or cypress mulch?

i'm doing my landscaping in the next few months and trying to decide what to use for mulch. we had looked at softscape but it's very expensive so i was figuring cypress. The house across from my office window had their landscape done in October and the cypress mulch looked great at first but not 6 months in it's silver and looks terrible. we like the look of pine straw so i'm back to leaning towards that or softscape fake pine straw in that brown color. Any negatives to pine straw? What's the price comparison to cypress?