I see this is a very old thread , with lots of comments . I've just skim read them , but I haven't seen anyone suggest anything like my 'top-of-my-head' idea -- I love the wood , and the white contrast , but pretty boring . Whats your favourite colour , or what ties in with the other rooms ? It might be blue or red or yellow or orange or green , as examples . So paint the skirting board and around the door a pastel shade of your choice , and add a small 30cm x 30cm abstract painting featuring that colour as the primary dominant one , above ( or possibly below , or maybe even get 2 matching/complementary ones ) the control panel . One lighting crowd suggested glass shades -- I'd actually go for someothing large but wooden , in much the same shade as your floors and steps , with LED bulbs -- you can get some stunning ones around 80-100 cm in diameter ( sort of a star ball shape ) for $300-400 . Total budget then $500 plus a painter and maybe electrician , unless you DIY .

My parents' old house had a wonderful oak front staircase that my six siblings and I used to race up and down, taking them two or three at a time, with only a casual hold on the railing. I don't know how we managed to never slip or fall. Now, the timber backstairs were steep, and had narrow treads and were poorly lit. We NEVER ran up or down them, but held tightly to the railing and hoped to heck we managed to stay upright. As an adult, my previous home had carpeted stairs, which I slipped on (wearing socks) and fell down twice, though thankfully I was closer to the bottom than the top. My current home has timber stairs with three narrow stainless steel runners stood on edge and inset horizontally across the front of each tread (this is supposed to help reduce risk of slips). I doubt I will get over the anxiety of taking another tumble, so I never go down them wearing socks, and if barefoot, I hold onto the railing for dear life and take it nice and slow. So far so good.

You have a complex set of requirements that won't be adequately addressed in an online forum of opinions. In addition the photo of the style of kitchen that you like is in a much larger space than you have available, and the size of that kitchen contributes to its presence. Without borrowing some space from adjacent rooms for a wider, larger kitchen then I would consider a G-plan with the end of the G being bench height seating with half the stools with their backs to the view, and the other half with their backs to the kitchen, as in this photo. I would engage a design professional to visit, take your brief, measure up and come back to you with a few concepts for the layout. Think hard about how important the symmetry is to your kitchen as it can really hamper creative solutions that are outside the box. It is still possible to have a Hamptons style kitchen, that has presence and is of a formal nature that is asymmetrical. The rest of your home is not symmetrical, and forcing a symmetrical design into a pre-existing space only ends in compromises to the functionality. A good design professional (not necessarily a kitchen designer) will look outside the three walls that are constraining your thinking and options to create an elegant solution, but you will need to pay for this creative service. Best of luck, Dr Retro of Dr Retro House Calls/Dr Retro Virtual Visits.

Choosing the right white is hard - so many options and they look different in every home. We are renovating our home and have new Blackbutt floors with mainly oak and teak wood furniture. Dulux has large a4 swatches for $1 that you can move from room to room easily without lots of patches on the wall. We purchased these for the 4 whites we were considering. We then numbered them on the front to make things easy and put them in every room in morning and artificial/evening light. We wrote down our preference for each room. While different whites work better in different rooms, by the end of the process we had a clear winner - Caspar White Quarter. A beautiful fresh white without any blue tones in our space. We painted this throughout with same colour in satin on the skirting.