Surely colors other than brown can go with cream :) Maybe a denim blue?

if you need a reference see this pic of an all white/cream kitchen

The advantage to all cream is you can have a very dramatic backsplash of any color your heart desires. Are you limited to the builders options? If so post some of your favorites. Have fun with it!

Cream is great. I love kitchen with light cabinets. I would always combine color with it to break it up a little bit. Greens or Blues would look great with it.

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Reds can also be a great color with cream. What about a copper colored backsplash?

Cream is a nice neutral backdrop. Everything goes with cream... except white... unless you really like that pseudo-monochromatic thing.

That white vent hood sure looks out of place. I'm guessing that all the appliances were ordered white - yikes! You could work with the builder or appliance supplier to have those changed right now before install of anything else.

Another option for the appliances is to have them painted professionally in a color. Viking has been making colored appliances for many years and now other companies are mimicking them.

The advantage to what you have is that you can paint walls and add accessories for whatever color scheme you want. It will be easy to change up your color scheme every few years if you so desired. Your certainly aren't tied into the brown/tan/cream scheme. Many shade of blue or green or red would be delightful paired with the cream cabinets. A harvest color scheme would be smashing with cream cabinets.

For the back splash, I would do a neutral subway tile (maybe cream, maybe a super pale glass) from counter top to bottom of the uppers. But you don't have to install something permanent like tile, faux painted splashes are easily update-able. Or a splash can be wallpaper; a print that you like or just a texture that gets painted.

right now it does look very plain, but all you have to do is throw some color into it. a pretty backsplash...just about any color would do, and once the appliances are in with the backsplash and maybe an accent bowl on the counter...it will look great.