Either way is correct - it's about color relationships and harmony, managing different levels of color contrasts. Focusing on one level of color contrast, like temperature, does not guarantee flawless color harmony. Cool with cool, warm with warm is an optional starting point for building color palettes but you still have to evaluate the color relationships as a whole. Whenever you choose to incorporate contrasts like warm and cool or light and dark, or clean and muted you're creating visual tension with color. For some people, the more visual tension between/among colors, the better and more interesting. For others that visual tension equates to visual discourse and they don't find it interesting at all. It's not pretty or pleasing in their opinion, maybe to the point it makes the space feel off and uncomfortable. Mixing warm and cool in creating color schemes is the more difficult level of color contrast to get right, pull off. Next most difficult is mixing clean and dirty or could say vivid and muted. Truly the easiest route is to choose a color temperature, warm palette or cool palette for the shell, walls, floors, and cabinets. Rely on using light and dark and interesting juxtapositions of harmonious colors to create levels of interest. A random example might look like this: floor is warm and midtone, cabinets are a white with a slight warm and creamy edge. Walls have a warm edge too and are a snidge to a lot darker than the floor.

you don't want white, and the darker colors, you say, will make it too dark, so that leaves you with light gray or one of those tones. what in the world are those cab made from? and who picked that granite to go w/those cabs? you say you're renting. they're letting you paint those? if they're made of a laminate type of material, the prep work for those will be necessary. quite frankly, I don't think it will look great painted. Do you really want to go through all of the work to paint those? have you ever painted cabinets? It's not something you can do in a weekend. Besides, that wood strip on the cabinets is kind of cool looking. changing out the country style cup pull to more of a bar pull will look better w/that style cabinet I'd leave the cabs and look into gettin a pre-fab, plain white or soft gray, quartz countertop. a 9' piece will cost about $450. fabricator can cut it to fit for another 600-900. maybe less depending on the layout of your kitchen. here's an example of pre-fab quartz, you only posted a small picture. post a pic showing the entire space

Yes, on a Sunday- The drywallers showed up this am to start putting up the sheet-rock.. FLo- waiting on a rendering/drawing for the 2 masterbath towers from the kd. Went to the local little island hardware store that carrys BM paint, brought back a bunch of paint chips to look at in the house for a start.. Because the house is very open, looking for something that I can use in/for kitchen, foyer, Dr & living areas. Jan- we are building on a small island, off of another island, no designers here on this island...I agree with you on the floor issue, I just need to convince dh- about the flow and using wood throughout.

Since you are mentioning the adjoining room I thinking it’s important to take under consideration. Go with a warm white. There are so many cabinet lines with various price points. i have a Dura Supreme kitchen up north and an Ultra Craft kitchen in the south.