Have you been to visit some kitchen showrooms? You can customise the photo search here on Houzz quite a bit. For example, you can simply select [dark wood[(https://www.houzz.com.au/photos/kitchen-design-ideas-with-dark-wood-cabinets-phbr1-bp~t_10444~a_17-103) cabinet finish in the filter options. Then add more filters like floor colour, kitchen layout, cabinet style, wall colour etc if you wish. Leave the benchtop and splashback options open and see what results you get. You can then save any photos that appeal to your ideabook.

Hi Khanh.... thanks for this. It appears that by looking at a lot of the Houzz pictures with kitchens on an already existing beige floor, it looks good to have a similar colour cupboard door, but have a darker bench top and splash back/tiles to off-set the beige colour? however any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.....Joanne

Your floor and other wall colours are great but Red (orange), black and white are very harsh together, the wall cabinets either side of the range hood have been badly installed, they should have been built to the ceiling. My suggestion is because the kitchen is small, I would remove the cabinets either side of the range hood and then run a row of white cabinets across above the sink to the end of the bench top. Paint the walls white or a soft grey, the range then becomes a stand alone feature. You didn't mention what the splash back material is but I would consider a clear mirror splash back along behind the sink and up to the base of the new white cabinets so that you're not just looking at a wall. cheers

Thank you everyone for your responses. I’m still undecided - I have a few weeks to consider what to do. The bench top salesperson showed me some photos of the few people who have added a small amount of benchtop stone to add some height (and it’s always because of a busy 60 x 30 patterned tile that the owners want to keep perfect) and in her words it looks ‘dicky’. Not least because the tile sits flatter against the wall than a 2cm thick slab of benchtop. It leaves a pronounced lip of 1.5cm where tile meets benchtop addition Then there’s the safety concerns mentioned above about flames near stone which I had not considered. Big reader - I love your maths but I’m only 150cm tall. Even with a low bench and oven height of 94cm (my oven’s lowest height setting) plus 70cm of tile between the bench and overheads, the cupboards are already 14cm above my head. This barely makes them usable for me even now! Adding another 15cm instead of the 10cm, while looking lovely and keeping the pattern intact, means my short-arse self will have real difficulty reaching anything safely. Every cm counts when you’re short! But I do appreciate your input!