personally I know it is modern but I do not like the wooden addition to the bench. I would suggest you just carry the bench (black marble if you can afford it) so that it has a greater over hang and serves the same purpose as a breakfast bar. To me the wood currently looks an eyesore.

White-matte cabinets (flat panel, not shaker) and white bench (or maybe epoxy sealed marine ply??...siriuskey can tell you about that), mirror splash. Love the ceilings. I personally would go for a modern, stream-line, no handles, integrated appliances look. This space has real potential to be very cool, even with the slate. It doesn't need any more more texture or darkness. This is a nice kitchen, you should be able to sell it on ebay.

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!

I'm sorry. It's guesswork a lot as what seems obvious to the poster isn't necessarily to the reader. It seems as if there might, might, be potential for 'go for it' to turn into 'expletive deleted this stuff is dirty/discoloured and won't peel off, how do I fix my kitchen, I'm sending my ex-friend the bill for this mess'. I mean we don't know how long you're going to be living there, whether your friend is thinking to renovate longterm, whether preserving resale value is important since the kitchen looks fine as is, whether either of you have thought that far ahead. And something like 'how to brighten' in the title would of sounded better than 'awful'. One person's too dark is another person's cosy and colourful.