With your description: flooring leans green

https://www.forbo.com/flooring/en-us/products/marmoleum/marmoleum-solid-sheet/marmoleum-slate/bin48x

Inverness Gold

Thank you! I can see why that would work. That Inverness gold is pretty - I was thinking something with both gold and a little gray. Any thoughts about using different tones for the perimeter counters and the island?

Do you have a drawing or picture showing the island and how it relates to the rest of the kitchen?

Yes, I thought I had uploaded more than one picture. Sorry! I will upload individually now. Ty.

Here’s a plan with dimensions

Another view

Top view, earlier plan, but quite similar

And an overview of how the kitchen relates to the rest of the house

Whether you paint the island in a different color is entirely a matter of taste and personal preference. It looks like your island is going to be fairly small (50.5" x 33"), and you're planning on adding darker flooring, so I would use a light countertop like the Inverness Gold elciegrecommended and then either stick with Honey Spice to make it identical to the perimeter (if you want it to blend in/fade away) or go lighter (a warm white or a lighter-than-the-floor green if you want to highlight it as a focal point). I definitely would not go darker, since your kitchen is fairly enclosed and you'll need some lighter, brighter contrast with your floors.

I would also keep your backsplash fairly light, again because you'll have dark floors and mid-tone cabinets. If you do white zellige tile with a countertop like the Inverness Gold, keep your tile warm, like the "Blanc" rather than "Neige Blanc" here: https://www.bedrosians.com/en/product/detail/zagora-tile/?itemNo=100003218 I think that could be very pretty!

Thank you! Do you think a hand made white tile backsplash would work with that? I don’t know how light/white countertop against white backsplash would look, but I am a bit leery of introducing another color.

Sorry, I didn’t see your second paragraph! Now I do, and thanks!

I think your cabinets are going to look great, and it would be fun to make the choices. I'm not an expert, but your descriptions are.... all over the place (?)

-A Victorian house, but you want to be transitional.

-Warm cabinets, with a (cool?) gray floor.

-The cabinets are traditional, but the floor is marmoleum, which I think and read is a great surface, but you have dark wood strip flooring going on elsewhere in the house, and light wood flooring and a MCM room elsewhere?

-It seems like a kinda MCM or utilitarian flooring choice, but then you have Zellige tile (a rustic material) as well, but with a quartz counter?

-Now a painted island as well?

All the things sound very pretty on their own, and each is a "statement" but...

Are you sure you're able to make all these things work together?

Hello - I am definitely not sure all will work together! (Hence, seeking advice.) I do not want to paint the island, at least not as a starting salvo. There are a few items that are not negotiable. I really like my floors in the living room and dining room, but we are not inclined to put wood in the kitchen, and it would be hard to match, especially since there are three different types of wood that abut the kitchen. That’s why we thought Marmoleum, which can be appropriate for older or MCM homes. The kitchen is not going to be craftsman or Victorian - it is going to be, I hope, a rather simple space that is way more functional than what we have now, and will not be jarring against the more traditional elements of the dining room and living room, and the more mid-century modern back room, not visible from the front. I truly do want it to be a “transitional” space.
I am not sure about the shade of gray for the floor; I had thought about shiitake Marmoleum rather than gray, though that would be low contrast. I could consider a lighter gray, but I tend not to like them as much. Man of the house likes gray, not wood. Cat has not expressed an opinion - she just wants to be able to throw up on it.
The countertops and backsplash colors are still up for grabs, though we are leaning toward either a Carrara quartz with some subtle gray and gold veining, or a soapstone look. Earlier advice on this thread says don’t go dark. The backsplash could be beautiful in a light glass teal, but we think a glossy white would be more versatile as long as it works well with the countertops. I tend to think exciting color should probably be in the dish towels.

And thanks very much for the feedback, Mrs. S - this is definitely a challenge!

We have volcanic ash mixed with silver shadow and eternity in a checkerboard-ish pattern--no idea if those colors are still around as we put that floor in back in 2010. (On a side note, we have Click II, which I would never do again--but I think sheet Marmoleum has worked better for some folks, and our household also has a dog and kids so more wear and tear than many.) Ours transitions to rift sawn white oak in the next room.

Our kitchen style is probably best described as eclectic Craftsman. We matched the cabinet doors to the original cabinetry from our 1915 Arts & Crafts bungalow, but it's half white inset and half green-gray frameless. Our "island" is really a work table, and is natural wood with stainless. The natural wood in the room is a mix of Douglas fir, maple, and beech depending on what was available in our price range at the time for the different elements (since it was a largely DIY project). I've been pleasantly surprised by how all of those woods have mellowed to have similarly warm undertones over the years, so they don't look terribly mismatched and they work with the gray flooring. We did a mix of soapstone counters, which I really love with the volcanic ash tiles, and butcher block counters, though ours are sealed so not used as true butcher block. I love those too and have not found them to be high maintenance at all, although we specifically did not use the butcher block next to the sink or range. (We used butcher block with the white cabinets and with the work table, and soapstone with the gray cabinets, which worked out so that the soapstone covered surfaces that would potentially be wet or hot.) Our walls are BM Wales Green, a sort of light lime--we tested literally dozens of greens to find one that would work with both the Marmoleum and the gray cabinets. The original plan had been to do green in the backsplash or on the cabinets themselves, but we chickened out and just did the walls, figuring it would be easy to change later.

So short version--I like the idea of dark perimeter counters with your cabinets if you want the backsplash to pop and also want to tie in to the floor. I wouldn't be afraid to have butcher block in the mix for the island (unless that is where the sink is?) And lots of ways to tie in green with volcanic ash if you want to go that route.

Thank you! I would love to see a picture.

We have a cat and adults - what was the problem with the click Marmoleum? Ty!

I think I found some of your pix - so much charm! I like that color green, too.

My Marmo issues:

- It scratches and gouges incredibly easily, particularly with a dog in the mix. We have tried repairing these following Forbo's instructions--we bought and saved extra tiles especially for this--but have had incredibly mixed results.

- Lighter-colored tiles stain (don't think this has been an issue with the volcanic ash tiles, though). Maybe this is par for the course with non-ceramic/porcelain surfaces, but it has been frustrating.

- Tile discolors with different levels of sun exposure; for instance, we have a mat at our back door that we tried to replace, only to find that the tile underneath was now a completely different color, so had to go back and get one that would hide this area. (Supposedly if you expose it to sun again it will eventually start to even out over time--we haven't tried--but it's not a good look in the interim, and some of the tiles that are just always more shaded than those near the windows are different colors from each other now, too.)

- For the Click specifically, if anything spills, the seams absorb it quickly and swell. We haven't had any spills I would consider out of the norm for typical kitchen use--water splashes out of the sink, kid spills a glass of milk, someone tries to mop the floor--but have lots of seams that are no longer flush as a result (and I don't want to think about where the milk and juice that have spilled have ended up over the years...)

There are things I like about it, too--we specifically wanted a floating floor that we could install ourselves since we have the original douglas fir subfloor underneath that we would someday like to refinish, and there were limited options. We needed a low profile floor, too, to accommodate a swinging door that opens into the kitchen--a lot of ceramic tile (including what was installed when we moved in) were too high. It was affordable (at the time at least!) We wanted something period-appropriate for our home. It is very forgiving when breakable things are dropped on it. It is lovely and warm underfoot, and we liked that it was a more sustainable option than some flooring we considered. But it has not weathered the years as I'd hoped, and for sure we'll need to replace it if we sell. If we stay here long term, I'm trying to give myself 20 years of it and then will look at replacing it (since I'd guess that by then, we'll need to refresh the paint on the cabinets too). Our neighbors have sheet Marmoleum that is coming up on 20 years old and have had a better experience overall. But again, no dogs or kids, so possibly adults + cats is just a better fit for it as a product. (It's also possible that the product has improved since we put ours in back in 2010.) But overall, I wouldn't choose it again--it's one of my few true regrets from our remodel.

Thanks so much for that detailed response, Artemis78! I will have a contractor install the floor; just not sure how experienced he is with glue-down sheet, as opposed to tile, and I also generally prefer not having to add glues when I can avoid it. We have horrible tile, and built up layers, with a wide plank sun-floor that I imagine is from 1900, but it is just that, I’m told - a subfloor. There will have to be some jackhammering to get all the concrete/mud up before making the surface smooth and more level, if not entirely level. It will be flat, though. Old houses.

Yep, ours was the same--the prep was painful. I'm remembering that this was another reason we did the Click vs. the sheet--Click was supposed to be better over a slightly imperfect subfloor, and that may well be true (though you can still see a couple of odd spots where we didn't get a nail flush with the subfloor so there's a little bump that shows through, and in one place my husband is convinced he must have left a spacer underneath by mistake). That said, our neighbors with sheet have exactly the same subfloor we have in a similar condition, and it worked out fine (though they did use a place that specialized in linoleum to install). We're fortunate to live in an area where even the subfloors were made of lovely (although softer) wood so make pretty decent primary flooring options. We'll likely either go that route or install hardwood when we finally replace the Marmoleum. (Unfortunately we ran the Click underneath the cabinets based on the guidance we got at the time, so it's going to be a headache to replace.)

Hhhmmm…we got six of one, half of another advice on running it under the cabinets…there has to be some kind of trim if not underneath…Ty again!

That’s indeed why we ran it under. :) The Click is considered floating flooring and I think these days the guidance is that floating floors don’t go under cabinets, but back when we did the project there was plenty of advice to the contrary too. TBH since we DIYed the floor I don’t think we could have managed running it around the cabinets anywa y. And I think sheet flooring generally goes underneath since it’s glued, so it will depend on which you use. We have not had any problems with the Click related to it being under the cabinets, though—it can apparently cause buckling as cabinets settle, but haven’t experienced that even in an unheated kitchen that does get some temperature swings. It’s just that replacing it will be a pain—either have to try to pull it out, cut around cabinets, or uninstall and reinstall the cabinets (hard no!) Not worrying about that bridge quite yet though!

Have, homeownership!

I meant to write “Ah, homeownership.” Autocorrect. 😉

@Carrie, that's a really good point--for our project we had decided about the flooring before ordering the cabinets, but if OP's cabinets are already ordered at a certain height, you'd for sure want to factor that in. I do think all else being equal, it's generally better to run flooring under cabinetry because then if you or some future owner ever changes the layout, you won't have weird patches of potentially mismatched flooring, and in an ideal world, flooring outlives cabinetry. The concerns about putting floating floors under cabinets are specific to the type of floor it is, I think, as opposed to the cost,

Thanks, Carrie and Artemis. We are making a lot of these decisions ourselves and your insights are very appreciated. Lots of things to weigh, besides budget and aesthetics!

Thank you, Manuel - I think that’s excellent advice. While I like bold colors, it is easier to change paint on the wall, or dishcloths, than tile or a countertop. I plan to have some colorful pots and pans, too! Also, it is a pretty small space with some natural light, but not a huge amount. One friend questioned whether I was straying too far from Victorian, but that would be way too dark, I think. I am striving for transitional, neutral, but not boring. I appreciate your advice.