Congratulations on your new home! What would you like your new kitchen to look like? Do you have any inspiration images?

Additional lighting in your space should be a priority. Is there a possibility of adding can lights to the ceiling or under-cabinet lighting?

Also, just because you have the orange stained wood cabinet doors doesn't mean you have to keep the door and window trims the same color. In fact, that wood colored trim could easily be white, and that would take about five minutes to paint.

I'd start with painting and adding a rug. Along the turquoise cabinet thread, you could go as bold as this:

Or an off white and get some accessories.

I also recommend working on the lighting first before decided to paint. Better ceiling lighting and some undercabinet task lighting. The central fixture you have right now is casting a lot of shadows and creating some glare by itself.

Yes! Lighting is incredibly important! It should be your first effort.

There are other ways of lightening your look, if that is what you're hoping to do. You could replace your center door panels with reeded glass. That way the contents of your upper cabinets would be obscured but you'd have less of a heavy wood look.

Alternatively, you could paint just the uppers.

But keep looking for inspiration images that don't require painting cabinets!

With a short splash of counter-material, you don't use a tile backsplash. It's one or the other. I would add a simple crown molding to the cabinets. I'd also paint the back of the beadboard cabinet a different color. You see that often in cottage kitchens. I'm not sure what color would work with both the orange cabinets and the light blue walls though. With white cabinets, you could do a buttery yellow beadboard. You need a tall item on that bottom shelf to fill some of the space.

Edit--yes, paint the uppers white! I would deepen the wall color if you did that.