Have you ever walked into a space, looked around, thought “nope” and then tried and figure out why? I did this the second I walked into my apartment kitchen. Here is a picture of it.
The combination of the countertop and the backsplash. Neither of them is my favorite, but they are fine on their own. I see what the designer was trying to accomplish, because the colors coordinate. Yet…it still doesn’t work.
When it comes to hard surfaces, you only get ONE busy/patterned element per space. My little apartment kitchen broke that rule, as both of them are busy and patterned. Here is another example.
Three patterned surfaces is WAY too busy. It is in no way timeless. If just one of these elements had been used in conjunction with two solid surfaces it would look 100X better.
If you are using the countertop material as a backsplash (this is called a solid slab backsplash). To do this you need to bring the backsplash up significantly.