The blues certainly are very pretty, it's just a pity they don't look very spacy.
Unfortunately, I'm not having much luck with lighter shades of grey, mostly, they just look terrible. Sticking with the pretty blues for the time being seems like the wise course.
As a thought, what can we do with those terrain images (the ones that make the forest and desert graphics on the standard maps, and the disused ones of whales and winds)? Hypothetically, can we do what Paradox did for Victoria, and create one of these the size of the whole map, that would add stars and terrain features to an otherwise spartan map?