One possibility would be to swap the living room and the dining room. Since the current living room is larger than the current dining room you could still keep some comfortable seating (couch and upholstered chairs?) against the front wall for a keeping room/dining concept. Then your new dining areas (kitchen and dining room) and living areas (living and drawing room) would have good flow between them, which would work well both for family and entertaining. You could also add some builtin bookshelves in the drawing room or new living room to create a library area to add another fun element to the living areas. These bookshelves could be against the long walls in the drawing room, around the window with a window seat in the living room (former dining room), or built to create some separation in the open area between the drawing room and living room/stair area. Your plan seems to show some sort of builtin there, but I'm not sure what it is.

A soft, warm grey shade would look lovely, and can be as dark or light as you want. A warmer shade will work with the brown stained wood floor, and the grey will complement the black granite. You could have an undertone of green, blue or tan if you didn't want a pure grey. And it would look nice with any silver metal hardware, either polished or satin/brushed, so you could choose pewter, chrome or nickel. It would still work with white trim too.

Yes they do have similar styles in porcelain, but to me it doesn't look the same. Search around that site and see if any of the other tile designs in other materials strike your fancy. I know you said you don't like the subway, but you could get a glass tile in a 2X8 and lay it in a herringbone or find shorter ones and do a chevron. Don't know if you care for mosaics, or penny rounds, those would also look nice. You are going to have to narrow it down to a look you are drawn to, and then go from there. Search kitchen backsplashes on here to get some ideas as well.

thank you very much to everyone who responded! I'll look into espresso and charcoal grays. As well as the steel backplash. Emmarenes, I'm living abroad in India, and the only granites in my budget are the local ones. I was advised against the gray and white local ones because i was told that they would not hold up well in the kitchen. I could have gone with a black galaxy as well but i have that granite now and despise it because of the way it hides ants and bugs so well. we live in a tropical area and there are always critters here and there. My first choice was a Brazilian white granite but it was triple the price. This granite is called Shiva pink, so it has a pink salmon and gray look to it. Im really hoping I don't hate it once it's installed. The stoneyard was a 9 hour trip up and down and i was just pressured to make a choice after several undecided trips. And I'm getting new cabinets put in. but I think I can wait for them to put the slab before staining the wood. Thanks for that idea :)