My goodness! One question at a time. First, the lighting - 55" wide or 55" long? Do you have a picture of it?

Second, you have very little natural light so yes, the charcoal over the cabinets will darken things considerably. The color you have now looks good.

Third, the window - do you need privacy there? Otherwise I'd leave it alone, its your only source of natural light that I can see.

Fourth, the grid over the vent hood doesn't make sense, it's running opposite of all the other grids. And IMO, there are just too many of them.

Hope that helps.

I like it! Very pretty!

the trouble with the grids is the ones that have very narrow glass, you end up with more wood than glass and its spotty. that was the problem of the original design and i expect the white paint exacerbates it. i'd change out the skinnies to wood, just put a solid piece of white paper over them, reassess the rest.

i like your light fixture, not commenting on whether its the right size or not. its awesome not having to put in 3 junction boxes in the ceiling to get the effect of multiple pendants, we tried that for our island but they were all too large.

lastly, when you go to paint you may consider painting the bit over the window, under the crown the color of the backsplash rather than the wall color. or inset something completely different.

Dang you have a big kitchen! And I thought mine was big! The bugaboo is that grid door turned sideways. The window being the focal point (from what I can tell)....I would say keep the grids to the left and right and do all the others in wood or plain glass....but! Because of the wonky turned sideways cabinet that would be difficult to do.

Let's try this on for imagination - keep the grids directly to the left and right of the window, and the four directly above the dishwasher. The rest do in wood (especially the ones over the fridge's ( how come you get TWO???) and see what you think.

The wall space above the sink looks strange. I would put a shelf between the cupboards or at least paint the wall the same colour as the cabinets. Agree that the grid over the stove doesn't work. But overall I think everything looks pretty good. I think charcoal paint would look good over the cabinets but I wouldn't go really dark,

nnigrt idea will help you decide which ones. Put white paper behind them all then remove the paper on some and see what you think, then put the paper back and try a different scenario.

The best answer for the area over the window is get a taller window - but since that is probably not possible, try a simple roman shade window treatment that gives the illusion of a taller window.