Personally I don't like gray with your cabinets. Cambria has these 2 that are more to beige side.

“For now we plan on keeping our cabinets the same...”

If you keep the cabinets as is, you’re going to have to pick a counter material that looks good with yellow/orange cabinets. That’s fine if you like that color. If in your heart of hearts you ultimately want, say, white cabinets, you’re stuck with a counter that really looks good with... yellow cabinets.

If I were you, before I spent a penny on counters I’d try to figure out the overall look for the space. Get inspiration images, and decide what you like. Post the layout here and get feedback on any changes. Then it’s fine to do things one step at a time - but you might find you’re ultimately going to change the layout a bit and the sink cut out won’t work, etc...

For now, maybe re-laminate your existing counters with something you like better than what you’ve got, and then invest in counters when you’ve got all your ducks in a row.

Thank you for your input everyone! We don’t want everything to look too warm/ yellow toned. We’ve seen some pictures of newer kitchens with close to our wood toned cabinets and white counters which we were thinking we could pull off

(Sorry for those awful photos, I didn’t realize they weren’t cropped.)

No worries. If that is the look you ultimately want, go for it.

Inspiration photos aside, I agree that putting a gray-toned countertop with your cabinets will make everything look off. Your inspiration photos are shown with a light floor.

I agree with jck. An off white cream would be better.

You can look into getting the cabinets professionally painted. Since your kitchen is not large, it may be affordable.

The quartz counters are so popular. I am doing a white kitchen with Silestone Calcutta. I understand you why you would want this for your kitchen.