Thank you everyone one for your ideas. I was thinking something like in this pic attached. A dark grey bench and subway tiled backsplash. I originally wanted a herringbone pattern with the tiles, but thought it might make the back splash lip of the ss sink look odd. I was thinking black handles as well. Plus we are getting a new cooker.

Hi everyone, I've finally gotten around to creating a "Before and After" post which includes my kitchen and the remainder of the house. Pop on over if you'd like a look! We are very happy with the finished project. Thanks, Louise

Hi Sue - it’s true - lots of paint companies don’t publish the data. But every single one of them has a measurement for Lightness / Hue Family / Chroma for each paint colour. For that is the system they use to conceive, make and match each paint colour in the first place. EasyRGB includes Dulux Paint and Frazee, Taubman’s and Benjamin Moore, all available in Australia. Every paint colour has an L = Lightness, C = Chroma h° = hue angle° So you know how light or dark, how colourful or near neutral and in which Hue Family each sits. In this system, consider a minimum difference in Chroma of 2, rather than 0.2. found in the images I posted above, between whites/off-whites. Were you to use Benjamin Moore, many are found in the Colorographies at The Land of Color. Taubmans themselves only publish Light Reflectance Value LRVf) each colour but nothing else. RGB or #Hex are the same and only useful for making digital swatches of a colour. No use to a householder. So,,,, if you fancy a Sherwin Williams product or Farrow and Ball colour, you can find all the important values for each colour and the nearest matches in Dulux, Frazee, Taubman’s, Benjamin Moore etc. on EasyRGB If you are comparing 3 very similar colours, you can consider each of their attributes separately on EasyRGB. Quick. Simple. Fun. 🌈 See where Taubman’s Quill sits in the Yellow Hue Family at 94° 🌈

Direction? Opening also matters for window furnishings. Not so much for splashback but if a high window lets sun shine on your tv just when you sit down to watch on summer evenings, or something like that, you'll want a way to screen it. If you don't think about those things in the planning stage, sometimes you find out about inconvenient glare or heat gain or whatever later.