There are options for on-site cabinet painting that range from you doing it yourself with something like Benjamin Moore Advance, to having them professionally masked and sprayed. The professional options will not look "horrible" but will not be as durable as a factory finish. A lot depends on how much you are willing to spend.

We are painting our cabinets ourselves, but it's quite a bit of work. I love the color of your cabinets. Could you add some hardware, and see if that updates your cabinets? Do you have under cabinet lighting?

I think a lot of work is required to make painted oak look like painted maple.

I painted my old oak cabinets using SW Pro Classic. The most used doors did wear but were easy to touch-up and was on-going for the several years they were in place. You will see the wood grain of oak but I didn't mind that.

Along with BM Advance, Funcolors/Lori Sawaya has recommended PPG Breakthrough. Read her post, here. [SW, BM, PPG for cabinets[(https://www.houzz.com/discussions/painter-who-has-been-highly-recommended-dsvw-vd~4755456)

DIY is a long and labor filled job. Hiring it out is an expensive one because of that. Also, who you hire may not want to use a different brand of paint than they're used to.

An article about priming/painting. I'm not affiliated with this company.

@Faron79 was so complementary about the Fine Paints of Europe paint that we are using it. It's really quite amazing stuff, though expensive.

I did not paint my wood cabinets and prefer the wood, but it also looks to me that the decisions you have made for flooring and countertop were made with white in mind. They can work with wood, but will work well with white. (My kitchen is in my "my pics" idea book.)

It is a toss up on how your cabinets will hold up - I honestly have not seen painted over finished kitchen cabinets hold up well over the long haul - 10 + years, but if you are handy and willing to occasionally refresh the paint job and take the time now to do a really great prep job it can look fine. Some here have posted painted cabinets that they love and say have held up well.

You can have white cabinets with wood trim - I've got pictures of that if wanted. I would not paint the wood paneled interior doors. Wood moves with changes in temp and humidity and this can cause hairline cracks at the joints - interior doors have lots of joints. This is why most factory painted cabinets and doors are MDF - it is more stable as to movement. Wood interior doors tend to have more value than white and are easier to upkeep. You may see these hairline cracks in the paint at the joints of the cabinets if you paint too - bothers some but not others.

You can do white trim with wood interior doors - that is what I have and it is a good look. It gives the brightness of white combined with the warmth of wood. In that situation, your cabinets can be either painted or wood.

This home from This Old House has a white kitchen, white trim, wood interior doors:

The trim is still wood in some rooms:

Whether you paint or not there are a few things you should consider doing. If you replace the backsplash, do not tile on top of a 4" countertop splash. Remove that and do a nice tile. If you keep the wood, a cream subway tile would be good. If you do not have under cabinet lighting, get it - especially with black countertops. It is the most functional thing I did and I only added it between the sink and range. Not only is it useful but it adds light and a pretty glow to the kitchen. Consider cladding the sides of the island with some paneling - beadboard or just decorative finish work.

Cream subway tile with wood cabinets:

If this was my kitchen I would move the microwave and put in a stainless vent. This is just because I am short and dislike reaching up for food especially over a range - just personal preference. The microwave looks new, so probably not something you would want to do, but if you change the backsplash and think you might want a hood in the future, reserve some tile for that area, or remove the microwave, tile the space and then put the microwave back.

This shows the paneling on my small island - also I have a cream tile backsplash:

https://www.houzz.com/photos/my-pics-work-in-progress-phvw-vp~109854052

If I was paneling your island, I'd probably do beadboard, but there are other options if you don't like beadboard. Mine had raised panels, but a shaker look could be done too. If you paint, a shiplap paneling could be done, but that is a somewhat trendy look.

Additional can lighting would do wonders to brighten up the space.

I think the darkness comes from the counters. Imagine that kitchen with something like Taj Mahal quartzite and it would really brighten the space, though it would probably be too matchy with the current floor.

I had medium stained cabinets in my kitchen and just went to even darker stained cabinet and it didn't really darken my kitchen. What made a big difference was going from very dark counters and dark back splash to very light ones.

They are in fantastic shape and I do not want to replace them but, I want the kitchen lighter and fresher.

Save the paint option for when the cabinets are looking shabby, old & tired.

Lighter kitchen?

Start with the obvious. Add lighting, ceiling & under cabinet. Paint the bottom side of the upper cabinets white. Get rid of the black counter tops. Shiny hardware.

If you paint the cabinets a light color, you will lose contrast because the floor is light.

Then, most likely, you'll decide that you want darker floors searching for contrast and will think about continuing your oak floors into the kitchen. So, the oak will creep it's way back into the kitchen anyway, ending up more or less at the point you started from. And cost you a lot of time, effort, inconvenience and $$$ in the process...

"Last March I updated our kitchen with new black granite countertops"

You need much better lighting no matter what you do to the cabinets, so start there.

People are saying to add lighting, but it looks like you do have can lights in the soffit - just not turned on in the picture.

They are very nice cabinets but I do see what you mean.

I would say yes, paint the cabinets. A white with a hint of color (blue, or sage green) would be interesting, or just a classic white -- picking a shade that works with the walls. I wonder if the background color on the decorative plates would work with the floor when in closer proximity -- on my laptop screen (which is very inaccurate at rendering color) it looks like maybe not; but if you like a yellow kitchen that could be nice.

The trick seems to be meticulous preparation and the best quality paint. My cabinets were made by a local cabinetmaker, so not a "factory applied" finish, but it is a catalyzed conversion finish and has been excellent so far (4.5 years). I believe that an experienced with it professional painting contractor can apply that kind of finish in your home, or might be able to remove your cabinets, paint at his workshop, and re-install.

Short of painting the cabinets, you might try replacing or even painting the backsplash with a lighter, brighter color. It all blends in a bit too much IMO.

If you do paint the cabs, consider replacing the knobs with pulls. Knobs tend to concentrate friction at one point, and you might get wearing of the finish there.

If you don't paint, changing to silver colored knobs and pulls would also break up some of the darkness.

It is a shame that when you did the recent update, you chose black counters. That is the problem, not your cabinets. It will be expensive to paint your cabinets white so that they'll look good (we've seen the bad results here of painting cabinets white but cheaping out on the process - better in that case not to have painted at all). Since the cabinet painting will cost in the same ballpark as replacing the counters for something light like a white quartz, I'd leave the pretty wood alone, and replace the counters. Donate the black ones to Habitat for Humanity and get the tax deduction.

Update the lighting and cabinet hardware as others have said.

DIY painting is time consuming and a lot of work. It means sanding, filling, sanding some more, spraying etc. The cost to have someone come in and do it will be thousands of dollars. Then it still will not look great because oak has a pronounced grain to it that is hard to get rid of.

As frieda said, the problem isn't the cabinets but the black counter.

I just painted our oak cabinets white from espresso. It was a LOT of hard work, no wonder professionals charge a lot of $$$$. The prep work was time-consuming, lots of sanding! I didn't want the grain to bleed through, so I used grain-filler (not wood filler.) Like I said, very labor-intensive. But I could still see some of the grain, though very faint and only in certain angle. Spray-painting was the easiest part.

Painting kitchen cabinets is a hard, pricey and risky work. If not done right, they can look very bad. Make sure to find the best professional to do this and pick the paint of the highest quality. It looks like you chose countertops and tiles with white cabinets in mind. And you're right, this kitchen would look lovely with white cabinets. However, it seems to me that you could have achieved a similar effect by choosing a nice white quartz countertop like Caesarstone Blizzard Quartz and matching (white and bright) backsplash. White floor tile would also have helped, plus some more lighting. This way you could save the gorgeous rustic look of your cabinets (these are never out of style) and brighten up the space.

Painting just the island might help.