Dear Fiddlehead, I don’t know if this is fair game for Dear Fiddlehead since it probably would be better to just hire you to redo the whole kitchen! But just in case you need some content, here is my dilemma!
We just bought this house and the kitchen is pretty great-we’ll swap out the light fixtures and maybe will do lighter counters some day, but for now it’s totally fine. But, I feel like it looks naked without a backslash! I want to put something in, but can’t figure out where to stop the tile since the counter and cabinet don’t match up. You can see that wall stops at a bay window, so I’m wondering if we should add shiplap to the whole wall all the way across. (Not sure if I want to do that though as it doesn’t seem like a very versatile style…)
Or maybe it doesn’t need a backsplash at all. What would you do?

Hi Liz,
Congratulations on the new house!  You’re right, with just a couple tweaks, this kitchen looks wonderful!
Your question about the backsplash is not rare.  It can be confusing to know where to stop the tile when your upper cabinets and countertops don’t line up at their stopping points. Although you may get different answers depending on whom you ask, it is our opinion that the backsplash always follows the line of the upper cabinet and should stop at that point in order to continue a crisp vertical edge.
You’ve probably seen some “creative” solutions to this problem such as this…

or this

but a nice clean line with the upper cabinet really is the best, least distracting look.

In your case, since you have the existing 4″ splash from your countertops, you will end the tile on top of that.
Hope this helps and keep sending your questions our way! Good luck ????