I haven't used these particular colors, but of your two choices, I think Antique White with Macadamia would be better. There is too little contrast between the colors with the other combination for my taste. Are these your choices or were they given to you to choose from? If these are your choices, have you considered using Antique White for the cabinets with Basket Beige for the walls? I think Basket Beige is a richer color than Macadamia, but I'm not crazy about it with Softer Tan. Or, maybe changing to Creamy (SW 7012) or Roman Column (SW 7562) for your lighter color?

Well, I've drawn out about a bazillion rearrangements, and out of those my husband and I selected about three of them for me to play around with a bit, to see if one shouts that this is the one to refine. I have to take breaks from this process often or I get too stressed out. Trying to keep it somewhat enjoyable. Graph paper speaks. It can make it obvious when the floorplan closes the house in too much, blocks views, etc,. Sometimes it shows that despite a room looking large, there is no good place to put couches, etc. because of walking paths to other rooms. The style house we are going to build is the old Florida "cracker style" home. It has a fairly steep pitched roof (metal), and a FULL wrap around porch. I don't want to bump out into or take away from the porch in any way. Most of the year we are able to use our porches. I've dreamed of this porch for years. It's more important to me than the sewing room, or anything else. An idea as to how we want the outside of the house to look like is to go onto the crackerstyleloghomes.com site and look at the "Fowler" That's the porch I want. I've come to the conclusion that I really don't want a loft. For one thing one never knows when they might break a leg. The other is I'm not getting any younger. After speaking with a few people that have lofts, many of them generally stop using them after awhile. Maybe it's the isolation thing. My husband and I also do not care for the extremely high vaulted ceilings that results over the unlofted area. The other issue is, lofts adds a huge, huge amount to the building costs. I'm afraid of having a half completed home if we do a loft. I know we have enough money to build a single story. I think. If we are very, very careful, and eat beans and rice. It's much cheaper to increase the base footprint, or build another structure than to build a loft and finish it off in nice wood. Some people will leave the floor joists exposed on the lower level, but I don't care for that look. I would want the ceiling portion done in tongue and groove like the walls. Heating and cooling costs also increase greatly with a lofted home, and they certainly aren't getting any cheaper!. The ceiling is so vaulted that it becomes wasted volume that is climate controlled. I think what I will end up with is a sewing room that is decent sized, but not quite as large as I would like. If I situate it properly, such as french doors that open into the great room, I can just wheel my cutting table into there to cut if I need more space. It doesn't bother my husband or I if I do that, and it can get wheeled back into the sewing room if company is expected. We really don't entertain much anyway, and if someone stops over unexpected to say hi, it doesn't bother me if they see my stuff out. I've been waiting to post a floor plan until we narrow the orientation of the rooms down to one we think will work. Then I truly want all of you to give me your thoughts on how best to refine it. I'll most liklely need help with the boxes that are storage areas and closets. Maybe with some prayer I will get to that point early this week. Moccasinlanding, I LOVE your storage ideas with stairs and such. They are excellent. I do like lofts....a lot. However, when I wrote down the pros and cons, the cons seem to be greater in number. Lofts can make less than "nice" things happen to the house, such as the high vaults. It certainly makes the house much harder to maintain, especially the outside structure being so far up in the air. (Think huge ladders). However, when it comes down to it, my main worry is running out of money mid construction. I refuse to get a mortgage or loan again. It's too nice living debt free now. My husband keeps saying how he can build me a sewing studio near the house (now to match it), for a reasonable amount of money. I've noticed that all the men I've spoken with LOVE detatched work areas. It must be a guy thing. They just don't understand my reluctance about it. The other evening we had a very violent thunderstorm. Bad lightning and rain, and we lost power for three hours. I pointed out that I couldn't see myself in a detatched studio in that kind of weather. In reality though, I wouldn't have stayed out in this imagined studio anyway. I love him dearly, but I swear the male species is from another planet. They probably think the same thing about women:) Maybe we women just feel more secure doing things within our homes, while men are genetically programmed to leave the house in order to hunt dinner for us. Sandy

Kitchendetective, that wall by the table is the only full wall. Other than that I have a lot of cutting in above and below windows and doors, plus a small wall about 18" wide next to my oven. I'm afraid it would look too chopped up to have those little bits and pieces one color and the table wall a different color. What do you think? I'm really terrible at visualizing. I want to say thanks to all of you for your specific paint suggestions. I've got them all written down and I'm going tomorrow to my local awesome paint store with my bag of samples and see what I come up with. It helps me so much to have specific paints to look at because there are just too many choices and it overwhelms a girl! tkbalt, your kitchen is so pretty. What a transformation from those white slab doors! I'll be back Monday with narrowed down choices and photos of my favorites painted on the wall with my kitchen samples propped up. OR MAYBE WITH MY REAL CABINETS!!! I just realized, cabs are scheduled to go in tomorrow. WOO HOO!!! Anita

You've put the cart before the horse by picking the cabinet colour after the counter and backsplash. But that doesn't mean there isn't a solution - it just means you've made the job a little harder to find just the right colour to pull it all together. I see in your comment that you were trying to stay away from either grey or white. To bring together the elements which are now fixed (floor, counter, backsplash tile) you need to find a colour that will work well with all of them. They all clearly have a grey tone of one sort or another. But I think if you can find the right colour of "greige" that leans toward a cooler grey colour, it might do it. You'll need to pick up lots of samples and keep trying until you find what works in your space with the light you've got. Remember that light bulbs can vastly change the appearance of colour in your room so I'd start by choosing a bright white bulb (somewhere between 3000 and 4000), if you don't have that already. Then as advised above, take samples of your tile and counter, and flooring (if you have some) to a good paint store (not a big box) and find someone to provide some guidance on colour choices . I've had really good luck with Benjamin Moore people - YMMV. Here are some ideas. Get samples and once you've narrowed down some choices, ask whomever is painting your cupboards to do some trial doors for you. Benjamin Moore Balboa Mist SW Mindful Grey BM Light Pewter