Help with kitchen planning please - tiles? Flooring?

[RunLyraRun]

We are having a new kitchen installed in a couple of weeks and I could do with some advice.

We're having these cream painted units (without the weird wine rack!) and oak worktops.

We have chosen Karndean flooring in celtic slate.

My issues:

1. My joiner has told me to choose some tiles to use as an upstand as, being oak, they won't fit perfectly to the wall. I can't think what tiles will go with cream and oak and slate. Maybe natural stone tumbled tiles, like these? Any better ideas? I'm not keen on colours - deeply unimaginative, I know.

1. I'm not sure if I even like tiles, I might prefer to just have an oak upstand instead - but will the join between the worktop and the upstand be a haven for damp and hence mould? (The bane of wooden worktops in any case).

1. It's a small house. The kitchen/diner is semi-open to the living room, via an archway (about the width of two doors). That's the whole downstairs. We are going to make the kitchen/diner more of a true kitchen/diner by removing the breakfast bar that currently separates the dining and kitchen areas, as it cuts right through the middle of the space and makes it feel even smaller.

We currently have carpet in the living room, through the archway into the dining area, then laminate in the tiny kitchen corner. We were planning on leaving the living room carpet alone, and flooring the whole kitchen/diner in the slate stuff linked to above, but I'm starting to wonder whether a) the slate is too dark for such a small space, and b) it might give more of a "flow" to have the same flooring throughout the whole downstairs. What do you think? If we did this, we would have to lose the slate - definitely too dark for the living room - and go for what? Oak? Or would that be too much with the oak worktops?

Help, I'm running out of time to decide!

I think I would use something a bit brighter and possibly glazed for the tiling so it didn't get a bit too neutral. A nice blue like this one - currently on sale! Maybe a shade or two paler.

I'd use slate all the way through and put brightly coloured rugs over it in the living room (I love slate).

Thank you. My whole house is neutral though, I'm afraid of doing anything with colour! The idea of brightly coloured rugs, well, I wouldn't know where to start!

I think slate would be a bit odd for our living room. Fantastic in a cottage or farmhouse, not quite right in a 1930s semi?

Oh, don't be afraid of colour! How about this blue instead?

Ive just bought these www.tonsoftiles.co.uk/crackle-glaze-retro-metro-tiles-c-57.html
to go with my cream units.. in the limehouse green..looking lovely (and cheaper than fired earth) (I dont know how to do the cleaver linky thing like above)

I had a cream painted kitchen with an oak worktop installed in our last house and we had blue glass tiles like these as the splashback... if you wanted a cleaner look you can go for a plain glass splashback with a colour behind.

you don't have to have a full height glass splashback but they do look very smart.

How funny, your layout sounds exactly the same as mine.

Anyway, I think you will need tiles, not a oak upstand. The wall above kitchen worksurfaces does get marked and dirty and so I would now choose neutral tiles up the wall to the cupboards above.

And you are right about the flow being better if you have the same flooring throughout downstairs. This needn't be the exact same flooring though - we have a sandy carpet in the living room and big rustic floor tiles in the same colour and tone in the kitchen.

Colour wise, I'm like you, I'm not a fan of bold colours. We have a white kitchen, oak surfaces and pale green brick shaped tiles. Looks fine. Sandy rustic floor tiles in a random-looking pattern with 3 different size tiles. Pale green walls in the kitchen. I've used raspberry red and pink as accent colours.

I think if you like neutrals why not go for a paler floor like a travertine tile or an engineered wood floor.The paler floor will also give an illusion of the space being bigger than it actually is.I would continue it right through the whole space and add rugs in neutral or brights.I have never heard of an oak upstand [usually stone i think].

Why not go for a more neutral floor colour? We are having new kitchen fitted next month and have gone for a shaker cream with laminate oak worktop...(with 2 kids I could never maintain solid oak and I am a lazy moo)...

If you like neutrals a brown on the floor, wood or floor tiles and then easier to mix neutral for the wall tiles..

Love the kitchen btw

Thank you all so much for your help. I really like the metro style tiles and have ordered a few samples from here as suggested (thanks scubagoose), in pale blue, pale green, cream, olive, etc.

I've also decided to go ahead with re-flooring the whole downstairs, as you've reassured me that oak flooring and oak worktops won't look too weird together. A big rug in the living room will help too. I'm going to post a separate question about Karndean vs. engineered wood.

Thanks again.