I would choose SW Reserved White

Thank you lisedv. I have a sample of softened green and it feels a litlte dark/heavy in my space. But that's a really neat tool! Also helps to find more photos of something that is similar. Houzz has some softened green posts but I haven't looked for october mist.

thanks for your comment @njmomma, the uppers are in good shape but the lowers aren’t sadly. I am looking forward to a fresh look!

ah finally figured out tagging, paging @Lori A. Sawaya for your input if available 😆

Love your backsplash! I like Opaline and Green Glimpse. Can you get to a paint store? I'd recommend getting samples of your favorites and painting on large pieces of posterboard, then viewing in different light.

Thanks @chicagoans! it was a long journey choosing my tile :-) yes thankfully I can get some actual paint this weekend. its just been really challening to find the right color so wanted to see what wisdom people might have!

I would do things that are easier to change down the road. What if you paint the cabinets pink... and then next year, you decide you want blue cabinets? Or purple?

Wood for cabinetry is very much back en vogue and trending. The things that you are planning to do are taste specific and trendy (the green) - the pink is not quite trending, yet.

I am guessing that your cabinets are useable. I would just add burnished brass hardware and bring in the colors in other ways.

if I convinced myself to paint those I'd pick med to slightly deeper green. notice how the deeper carpet colors look good in the living room......the wood cabinetry is my preference, but the lighting in the space , and the confined space w the U shape will support just the right color in a satin or semi gloss. lighter shades? just too ....meh....Id leave the wood before those / good luck.....if you want the painted kitchen , go for it !

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@herbflavor thanks for your input, point taken about how deeper colors might serve here!

I understand also the sense that keeping the wood might be better (also @freedomplace1). It was going to cost more to refinish than paint and I am wanting a new look.

I am so appreciative of people putting their thoughts here! I am going to give the deeper colors some consideration.

The lowers worse for wear.

Looks like the lowers are water damaged. I would hope that all water problems have been solved, because, paint that gets wet, wont look as good as the wood does. It will soften and it will chip. No water running down the fronts. You dont say, if this is a diy paint job, but, just in case it is. Please clean cabinets to within an inch of their life. Then sand them very well. Make sure you have a cool dry place to paint them. Make sure all dust is wiped off. Prime them with an oil based sealing bonding primer. Follow the directions on the can as to when it can be painted. Use a paint that is meant for cabinets, not any wall type paints. It could take 2-3 coats of paint. Again, look at the can to see how soon it can be recoated. All brands are different. I would also pick a darker shade. Good Luck. I forgot to mention, that I love your backsplash tile. Its very pretty.

Thank you @cat_ky. Thankfully it's within budget to have professional painters do the job, but I have no doubt your comments will be helpful for the DIYers out there. There actually was a slow undetected leak that started off this whole reno that I hadn't planned for this year. That has all been taken care of, thank goodness!

First, you can manage the time line.

There's at least one day of labor, probably two to keep them busy. They can wait for the color and get you a sample in the product they're using after prep.

Farrow & Ball's French Gray with that backsplash (and wood floor and living room rug) would be ridiculously stunning. SW's Svelte Sage is identical. Samplize is available and IMO thanks to the condition of those lowers, you have time to get it.

Unless the painter is using a SW cabinet product, he's going to have to color match so it doesn't matter what collection the color comes from.

French Gray. Svelt Sage. Potato. Patahto.

Despite the marketing, there's nothing special about Farrow & Ball colors. It's the same as any other brand; the combination of base and colorants is unique and whether another brand can copy their colors depends on the color.

I think many options in colors will work but brass hardware is a must and swapping out some of the door middles with glass will help balance the kitchen. Some of tile colors got messed up in the renderings. I prefer the timeless off white look, with brass and some glass doors myself.

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@Lori A. Sawaya thank you so much for your input. I will definitely see if I can negotiate timeline with the painters. They are using a specific SW product (gallery series I think..) for cabinets, so I very much appreicate the SW equivalent. I'm going to check it out! Thanks again!

@George thank you for the renderings. I hit my chatgpt 5 image limit pretty quickly so this is fantastic! White sure is fresh! That middle green is really nice too :-) Thanks.

A member posted her kitchen using SW Filmy Green. I can’t find it but it really is lovely.

I personally prefer bluer greens and would use a bluer green with your tile. I am loving Willow Tree with your tile. But I don't need to live with the color choice.

I find Forever Green just a bit more colorful than I would use.

Please do look at the other rooms that are near the kitchen and make sure the green you choose for the cabinets works with those colors as well as with your backsplash tile.

cheerful/cozy/feminine

These greens that you have been looking at do not read cheerful feminine to me. Some a beautiful, and I like them a lot. But I never like cheerful or feminine so if I like them, you might be straying your original quest. :)

With greens, I feel like you are trying to match the leaf color in your tiles, and it isn't working. You have intense gem tones in your tile. It isn't a light floral print. And with these greens, I feel like it reads like a band of what running through your kitchen sandwiched between two layers of darker color. So it doesn't really read a cheerful to me. And it doesn't make the tile feel integrated into the whole. In fact @ George's post of white cabinets feels far more cheerful and feminine to me than any of the greens.

Have you considered a beautiful white? You also mentioned pink. Have you looked at any pinks? I'm quite in love with my bedroom that is painted Dimnity by Farrow and Ball. It is a very warm white with a hint of red undertone that reads soft pink in my my lighting. Perhaps SW has an equivalent that @Lori A. Sawaya could suggest just to see some other options.

Subtle or more saturated...

I like George's white mock-up best. Maybe Lyn's suggestion of Reserved White is the way to go? You should definitely try to get one cabinet door done as a sample before they do the whole kitchen because the sheen will influence how you see the color. There is really no substitute for sampling. You need to be able to see a finished door next to your backsplash.

Thanks so much @Kendrah, @kandrewspa, @Jennifer Hogan for adding to this convo - so many different ideas! I realized that the color Lori recommended (Svelte ASage) was a family of colors I already had samples of (ancient marble, grassland). I think it's a little more olivey than I prefer.

I decided to get some actual paint samples painted on larger samples - very informative, though very time consuming and the cost is adding up.

I tried a color from Home Depot that was sort of in between SW Contented and SW Coastal Plain. It was way, way too much color and too dark. I sort of like the hue but would need to be much less saturated. I don't want to overshadow the tile.

I tried a much lighter hue (SW Opaline): I like the value, but it's too minty, not warm enough and sort of clashes with the warm hardware I have selected. Another option I could try that is warmer but similar value would be SW Sagey.

Lastly, I tried SW Pale Pink. It's very subtle. Almost reads as white. I like it more than the Opaline but wonder if I want something with more color so it's not too washed out.

I'm going to see how these look in the morning and see if I want to go through the additional trouble of yet more samples! I think of these I like the Pale Pink best. Curious to know what people think after these photos!

Can I ask what color the walls are in the Living Room and Kitchen?

I don't disagree with your assessment that the blue green from Home Depot is too saturated and too dark, but I think you are going to have difficulty with pinks.

You selected a tile with very clean, clear colors and they are colors that I love. The pink is a lovely accent, but if you try to bring pink into the cabinets it will need to work next to the orange wood flooring and the bright white countertops as well as the tile backsplash.

Maybe grayer greens that are a bit lighter will work well.

Here are a few other colors that you may want to explore. (Included Opaline as a comparison.

Left two pink samples that are popular pinks - one warmer, one cooler.

I generally test with small samples first to get an idea of the colors I like before moving on to buying a sample jar or ordering a sample from samplize.com, Samplize has made life so easy!

Thank you @Jennifer Hogan. The wall color is Pale Oak (BM). In my lighting it tends toward looking blue and gray rather than the greige/beige it appears on the sample! I've got a lot of Samplize options here though its been hard for my brain to extrapolate to the whole kitchen being that color! I am considering a grayer green today like SW filmy green which I have a samplize sample of. I also have samples of First Light (leans too purple in here) and a few small samples of Lotus Petal (way too much color, but maybe a less saturated version of that hue would work).

@Jennifer Hogan - it's a good point about the adjoining rooms. a green or gray-green would be a bit more harmonious with the surrounding rooms!

I love green and have a lot of it my house - it is one of the colors I never seem to get tired of, there were some fun options in this Country Living article https://www.countryliving.com/home-design/color/g4295/green-kitchens/

Okay - Pale oak is influenced by the orange in the flooring. Pale oak is a light, very gray or neutralized orange yellow color.

Same Luminance and hue as Pale oak, but much more saturated.

It appears more beige when the floors are less saturated.

Color is always about comparison to the surrounding colors.

Blue green grays are really pretty with Pale Oak.

I would not go lighter than Pale Oak. (86)

Opaline feels a bit too light

Gray Owl may be too gray

I really like pale oak with the blue green grays below.

Testing in your own home is the best way to see if one of the colors is too dark or light, too bright or too gray, but if we have a starting point with something that feels good with the floors, backsplash and pale oak we can tweak from there.

Have you ever considered removing all you uppers? I did and love it!

The fgreen in the tile if keeping all the cabinets I too love the look of no uppers if you can handle it Try 4000K bulbs and IMO under cabinet same 4000K too and then the darker green would be fab

Your kitchen isn't an separate room but part of an open space. please show all four walls of the entire space. What's wrong with the cabinet finish you have? It harmonizes perfectly with your floors.

Your whites don't seem to match the countertops. Do you want two shades of white?

Here's how to post a Design Dilemma. It would've been helpful to know at the beginning what the entire space looks like from all four sides but most especially to be told the bottom cabinets have water damage. Here is how to post a Design Dilemma to get the best results. (Post only one thread on same Dilemma. You can add photos to original thread.) You need to show the whole space—all four sides of an entire space—even if it’s about one specific Dilemma. Commenters need to see doorways, windows, closets, finishes throughout the space to make informed suggestions. In open spaces, Commentors need to see adjacent spaces like living, dining, family room areas that adjoin a kitchen. This is so finishes like cabinetry, paint, and flooring harmonize in the while space.

State right at the beginning what the room will be used for and who will use it. State the non-negotiables at the beginning, what has to be kept. Give some idea of the budget. And provide approximate measurements

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/6417709/unofficial-design-dilemma-boot-camp

Keep in mind that you're inviting some design pros and people with a design eye into your home via photos. If they walked into your actual space, they would take in all of it: all four sides, doorways, floors, windows, ceiling, built-in fixtures, lighting, trim--the "givens"--then the features that can be changed--furnishings, paint, art, rugs, decor items, etc. It's all one first impression. Same thing with photos. That's why it's important to provide well lit photos of the entire space, taken from all sides of a room regardless of the size of your problem.

Thanks so much for folks chiming in with their thoughts about my question of paint color. I wanted to give an update so that people who search later about the paint colors can have another reference. After my prior update I also tried SW Gorgeous White - a really beautiful blush that I would consider for my bedroom but which didn't tie in enough with my tile. I also tried SW Nonchalant White, which was almost perfect but because of the yellow tones looked a little sickly. In the end I chose SW Filmy Green. I'll post some photos below. Under more light, and especially warm underacab ligting, filmy green reads as a soft leaf green. However, in my north facing kitchen it's almost like retro mint. At night it reads as a more muted blue-gray. It's kind of a tricky color. If I could paint my kitchen 10 times with different colors I might try some other options. But in the end I'm pretty damn happy with the result. It's really cheerful and bright, I feel happy in it :-)

See difference from undercab (softer yellow green) to cabinet (bluer).

it really is the same color! My can lights just don't put out enough light to get the same saturation as under cab.

Finished product! I'd say it looks a bit more green in person. It's quite saturated and bright.

Thanks everyone! I'm so thrilled with my kitchen :-)

Before!!

The floor now looks so much nicer w a real color . Its truly a kitchen ”refresh”. enjoy the pretty space…

Oh wow it looks terrific! fresh and bright and pretty, enjoy ✨

Looks incredible! I really like your unique backsplash tile.