There's another thread about design seeds which is a website that takes lovely photos and uses them to inspire color schemes. In the thread linked below, I suggest ways in which you can use a palette to create rooms that all coordinate and flow without being all one color. You might want to take a look at that. You've got a lot of beautiful rooms to work with. Pretty generally, the best place to change a color, if not at a doorway, is at an inside corner...though if you have a good painter, you can break it at outside corners too. Here is a link that might be useful: Applying design seeds

I'm no color expert, but have you tried BM Wickham gray HC171? We used that in our house and in some lights it reads blue, other times of day a light gray. It might be a good middle ground between your gray and hubby's blue.

On my screen, looks like you posted in the Paint forum. I suggest you post in Home Decorating, for lots of opinions. The colors on the non-removable items seem warm to me: especially the floors and cabinets, which are really pretty! I like warm colors, myself, and with what you have there, I'd just paint the walls lighter, like a nuanced warm shade of white. But I guess that's not what you want to do.... So, my advice is to visit some paint stores, buy some posterboards, and many small sample jars of paints you may like... and start experimenting. I think your experiments will go better if you paint out one wall as white a color as you can, and then you can judge the posterboard colors more easily. You do seem drawn to cooler-toned rugs. There are experts who can help you with this. I'd go to the home dec. forum for more advice.

I think what Sophie means is that the gray black and white trend is on its deathbed and you might want to think about using some color, or at least some neutrals that won’t scream 20-teens in five years when they are out of style. There are a LOT of posts on these forums from people who chose gray finishes and then are surprised to find that their rooms feel dark, or colorless, or boring, or cold, and a lot of colors just don’t work with them. Once the cabinets, counters, and floors are in, you’re kind of stuck with them for a long time. Honestly, some of the photos posted for help, I would have sworn were black and white photos That said, if you have looked at a lot of kitchens and you love gray on gray and are not just seduced by the images we’ve all be bombarded with over the past few years, go for it. I haven’t personally used Simply White but I’ve heard it described as a warm white, and also as a stark white. Depends on your light and the colors around it. Grays also come in a lot of different flavors, and can be blue-ish, greenish, taupe-ish, so how they work with any particular greige (also variable) depends on which colors you’re comparing. Sorry if this is really vague. Pick a few greige and grays that you think you’d like to work with and compare painted swatches (on poster board at least a foot square) side by side. In natural light and artificial light at different times of day. Post photos of the comparisons for opinions. Also include photos of your counter, backsplash, and floor materials. You can always repaint the walls if they’re not working, but once your island is painted, not so easy to fix. Choose paint last.