I would do a marble backsplash. Or, a light gray. Both are good go-togethers with the white and black as well as tying in your island. If you decide on a random color, it will need to relate to something else in the room. Using Suzanne's picture as an example, note the ceiling in blue to match the tiles.

Hi Chispa, House is a townhouse built in 1996, trying to modernize the look. As far as decorating style, I like modern/contemporary, nothing too funky. Something that would be cohesive with the rest of the kitchen, and bring the kitchen to life a little. It's very white right now.

Thanks you so much for your help. we might redo the backsplash after we settle. From what we read online, regrouting the subway tiles seems easy, didn’t come across much information about these kind of mosaic ones. we assumed we can get help from here. So we have option of painting as well. Gray design In the tiles blends with the gray grout and tan grout might help to highlight the design. regarding the clause, we never noticed until the project manager refused to redo. We are in a state where attorney review is not part of the process. it Is our first time building a home, so we never see it coming. We are not playing victim here. Definitely the builders are not on the right side. they save installed lighter grout in the neighborhood for similar mosaic tiles. Builders have separate paperwork for dark grout based on owners choice (which we came to know after our issue). Even the design studio people verbally agree that it is not their usual way to use dark grout without request. They are surprised when e stopped at the design studio to confirm on the sample. These are not the only issue with the builders, and the work is not clean by their supposed standard and $$$ they are charging, please don’t judge, as people can be genuine with their worries, thanks again for all your suggestions.

Good question:), recently, we got all the walls painted white as we wanted the house to be bright. We did not think much about each detail then. If we start thinking of kitchen walls, we would have to consider living room walls too as it is an open concept floor plan and it would become a bigger project of painting walls that we just undertook. So I thought we could start with just the kitchen and do the cabinet paint and other hardware changes that have been overdue.