I love aqua colors for laundry rooms. Aqua will work nicely with either white or gray appliances.

FWIW, getting rid of the fluorescent light is very much worth it. Get LED's with a good CRI (color rendering index)...80 CRI rating is good; 90 CRI is better. The paint color will look so much better and, when you need to fish a clean pair of socks out of the dryer, you will be able to tell the navy sox from the black sox.

And make the lighting change before you select the paint color.

Important question: What colors are you using throughout the rest of your house? All your spaces need to coordinate. Having said that, you can use a strong color /strong version of what you're using throughout the rest of the house in this small work space.

All of the public areas of the house are painted SW Nomadic Desert. The living room has pops of light blue/aqua and I'm strongly considering having the built-ins in my office/library/music room painted SW Meditative or a shade or two lighter. You can see those colors below.

That said, I was hoping I could go for something different in my laundry room since it isn't a public space.

How about a green that coordinates with the blues in your house? Look at Green Trance or Waterscape. I don't know how dark a color you want.

I used an aqua in my small laundry closet without worrying about coordinating. But it’s likely you could find a color that does fit in your overall “ theme”. So what colors float your boat? I like blues, greens, aquas— all the “ water colors” - in a laundry with white appliances, but I’ve seen warm colored decor also that looked good. In retrospect I could have gone one step deeper on the color but was afraid it would be too dark. Gray appliances might be a tad bossier than white , so might influence your choice. For example I’ve seen room photos of various green paint & wood tones that look fresh & crisp with white but might moosh together with gray.
We did replace the overhead fluorescent bulbs with 48” LED tubes and no regrets there.

why is it not worth the money to change the light fixture? is it a balast style or something else?

lets see the fixture.

it's simple to remove it and put up another. you don't need an electrician.

any color we choose for you here is going to be altered by florescent light.

Besides, you'll need to wait until those floors are installed so we can see the effect of the ghastly florescent reflecting off the yellow toned floor tiles. I will tell you one thing if you stay w/that lighting, don't do any greens.

You actually have a decent spot that could be made a lot better looking by some simple things.

lighting is one. paint, and the addition of some shelving - wall decor or laundry items are some others

I get it. no one likes doing laudry. But if the room was cute and fun to look at, doing laudry might be tolerable. and if you had a spot to fold, you could do it there.

tell me you'd rather not have this:

looks like you have the room on that far wall to do a hanging rod. I love my rod. have you thought about doing that?

doesn't have to be this exact style. Just showing your some options to take advantage of what you have

heres a how-to

https://simply2moms.com/wait-until-you-see-this-amazing-laundry-room-transformation/

this room is smaller than yours, but they've made use out of every inch. Do you have shelving or cabs over yours now?

you could at least install a rod from wall to wall, or even some pull down drying racks.

This blue would actually be nice w/your tile

Lot of potential in that room to be something cute.

This is one of my favourite Houzz makeovers. It's a long thread so you can just scroll to right near end of the thread where she shows a few pairs of pictures "before and after". https://www.houzz.com/discussions/3792622/sad-ugly-laundry-room

I vote for white appliances. Obviously they’re easier to decorate around and will brighten your small space. I agree that a knockout color will make you much happier when you do a thankless task like laundry. Maybe a soft green will work but waiting till the floor is in and you’ve CHANGED THE BULBS OR FIXTURE (not subtle hint) your choice of color might also change.

I inherited 5 florescent light fixtures in my house and promptly changed all of them. They cast a horrid ghostly color on everything. And yeah, my laundry room had one too. An inexpensive fixture from Wayfair was well worth it. And I put a subtly patterned porcelain tile in that room and the mud room area. It definitely makes a difference when the laundry room is “designed”.

The reaso I mentioned using LED tube lights is tgst it’s quite hard to get a log of lumens from a decorative ceiling fixture otherwise, and small laundry rooms don’t often have room for combinations of cans, pendants , often no true under counter light space. But I want mine very brightly lit.

I love horses and wildlife art and bold colors, and your dilemma made me think of the artist Marcia Baldwin. She creates unique colorful horse paintings and many are the Native American painted ponies.

In every painting there are shades of blues and a bit of red and/or gold

Wall color can't be as brilliant as colors in paintings, but I think if I were starting with your color palette I would do a soften up the reds then carry some reds through the rest of the house as accents.

Another option is to bring in some of the orangish golds (which I love for laundry rooms - yellows are such a clean colors)

I didn't know you could purchase LED tubes for florescent fixtures. This fixes the lighting issue and opens up colors. I can save a couple of hundred dollars buying white units over gray and blue/aqua walls would definitely look good with the white units and floors.

There are currently cabinets above the washer and dryer, but they are small and too high for me to reach. We are going to replace those with longer cabinets that fill the wall to capitalize on storage.

Thanks for the ideas!

How to convert fluorescent fixture to LED:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKEQ1HCLW5c

DO remove the ballasts as he advocates. Ballasts consume a bit of extra electricity but the big PIA is that ballasts go bad and have to be replaced. Eliminate them when you do the conversion to prevent a sure future headache/ chore.

And, yes, I would choose white over gray machines, too.

Like any other decorating project, paint is the last thing you choose. So choose a picture that makes you smile, and maybe add a throw rug in a colour that complements it. Then choose the blue/aqua paint that looks good with those things.

It's very easy to match paint to a picture or rug, but much harder to find a picture with that exact shade of blue if you've already painted.

Really like BM Smoke with your new flooring and it also feels calm. Take advantage of far wall by adding shelving/baskets and a drying rack, which will be really handy.