With the gray carpet, cool colors would probably work best - green, blue, purple, mauve to blend in. For accents, red and burgundy look great with gray. Silver sage or a silvery blue are pretty. Check out SW Svelte Sage, Samovar Silver or Krypton (or the other colors on those strips). Or just paint the walls gray (which I'm reading is the current color trend) and spice things up with accent pieces in brighter colors.

You know, I'd go with seaworthy top and bottom. I love the color, and I think it would look less chopped up, plus the blue against the pine would look great. I would also check out Benjamin Moore New York State of Mind, BM Lucerne, Gentleman's Gray (although very dark) or SW Commodore.

Yes, absolutely. Ceiling does look higher. The whole space feels more open, cleaner, and airy. It's a pleasure to be there, after 25+ years of being kind of a utilitarian space. So there's hope for all of those boring spaces in our homes, y'all!

Thank you, everyone, for the guidance! I am sorry for the late response. Work slowed my progress here at home! I'm back and willing to look into these colors. I've thought a lot about what feeling I would ike when we walk into these rooms and I think my biggest fear is that anything too gray will be very blah - it also is very shadowy and dingy on our walls most of the day b/c of the lighting from the North and West. I want a warm cheery kitchen - rustic and farmhouse - but not modern gray/white farmhouse. that's definitely not us! I am having trouble finding pictures online that have gray cabinets and darker/non-white walls. To answer your question, Open House Home Staging and Redesign, yes, we have some old/not permanent furniture in the back room. Mostly to see if we could get a feel for what it will look like in the future - just a old dog couch. I'll put a photo below - we haven't added the base molding b/c we are waiting to figure out the trim color and painting before we put on. Even with the random pieces of furniture, the room feels too light for us. We want a deeper color. I think the LRV of ancient ivory is 80 something. Just a little too washed out and with a greenish tinge - I would rather go more green or not at all b/c the ancient ivory looks dirty about 80% of the day and then during the evening, there's a warm glow to the walls that is still too light for my tastes but it's cozy! We were going for warm/cozy feel since we are setting up a wood stove and it's going to be a den for reading and hanging out, esp in the winter. The window look into the yard and woods, so we wanted a grounded/naturey feel but we missed the target with the ancient ivory. I will definitely check out manchester tan! I went to a BM store and spot with a color consultant. She showed me some beautiful colors that worked well with the Urbane Bronze and even the countertop but, unfortunately, they are too gray. Against my better judgement, I listened and got samples of Balboa Mist and Wind's Breath. In the store they looked pretty with the Urbane Bonze and I understood why the consultant felt tans or other colors were too yellow (b/c of the tile) but I don't know if she really heard me when I said that any gray in these rooms looks VERY gray. I tried both and while they are nice with the urbane bronze, they are not the right color for us. Balboa Mist is too purple and too gray. On the wall in the kitchen it looks dreary and blah. It seems very violet in the back room too - I tried in two spots. The Wind's breath is nicer - in that seems to be browner with less gray but it's still very light. In the kitchen, it seems to have a pinkish hue to it with the counter - again, I'm not a fan. I wish I was. The LRV of WB is 70 or so. A lot of the colors I like seem to be a little lower than that - mid 60s. Not that is our only guideline but it seems to be the one consistent thing my husband and I agree on - more color and less gray! Maybe more of a transition color so the cabinets do not look like the are floating I can't remember if I mentioned but the color "skipping stone" by BM was recommended to us by someone on houzz. The BM color consultant talked me out of it but I can't remember why - I think she said it didn't look good with the counter tops? I din't know. I'm going to stop listening to hear and go back to listening to Houzz b/c Manchester Tan looks beautiful. I'll probably try a sample of SS too. Thank you in advance. In case this helps at all...here is a pic of the back room. This is with Ancient Ivory on the walls and the spare furniture. Here, I like the yellow-y feel but the real life view was more green tinged and even more washed out. Just as an example - when we first started the journey. Here is our *before* pic. We've come a long way...the paint color is killing me though.. Also, before we decided to re-do the cabinets, we tried a dark gray on the wall in the back. I think that is BM dovetail (or something along those lines). We also tried SW Repose gray in the kitchen with the yellow cabinets. It looks really pretty but b/c we wanted one color to unify the two rooms (since we have two diff floors, weird granite, tile countertops, there was so much going on) we ended up changing everything. thanks in advance for listing to our saga! I'll get a sample of Manchester Tan!