The 6x24 grey tile in the shower area (and behind the toilet) is "Layers Sediment" - "an Italian tile made in the US". The tile on the floor is 13" square tile called "Bamboo Grey". In pictures it looks like just plain white tile, unfortunately. Toilet is dual-flushing Kohler K-3654 (list price: $375.20). I got it at Home Depot along with a matching slow-closing lid. Love both.

Look again -- those are not all contemporary kitchens, though many are. The traditional ones do have a clean, updated feel to them. Also keep in mind that many folks use rugs or mats in the work areas of their kitchens and you can certainly add some color (not to mention warmth or comfort while working) that way. Also consider wall color. White walls are part of the more contemporary look. Bring in some color and warmth and it can go either way. Style of the cabinets and other details make a big difference too. So often, it is not what you do as much as how you do it. My new kitchen now has dark wood floors, but here is a photo of the old kitchen -- off white and off white/beige tile that looked like travertine. We liked the white cabinet/nearly white floor combination (yes, walls are lacking color here -- we stripped the dark teal background floral paper), but the contractors messed up the tile so badly that we wound up replacing the floors. This was a very popular look in mostly very traditional kitchens here and most have been updated with new counters and appliances, but many still have light floors with both medium to dark wood and white cabinets.

The organization of our remodeled kitchen has really helped. I was fortunate that we could rework our kitchen so that we could add more cabinetry. Creative nesting and unnesting of objects in the few cabinets in our old kitchen was so annoying that I really hated putting anything away. I love having a variety of cabinetry. I'm not of the drawer-for-all-purposes ilk. I love matching the items I want to store to the right type of cabinet. For instance, my large mixing bowls, stainless and glass, are on the bottom shelf of a door cabinet. It's really simple to open a door and get a good view of the bowls from the side (instead of a view of the top items only in a drawer) and to grab a bowl from the bottom of the stack without having the sides of a drawer interfering. I would hate having to pull out the entire stack of bowls every time I wanted one near the bottom. I use a variety of these bowls just about every time I prepare something and for me, the fixed shelf is the ideal spot. An all-drawer kitchen would have forced me to compromise. I love having lots of upper shelves. I can space them as closely as possible to make as much of the vertical space as I can. The more surfaces I have, the less nesting I have to do. Roll outs, although not as convenient as drawers, allow better use of vertical space. If a drawer is too deep space is wasted and if a drawer is too shallow it's unusable. I prioritized storage so that my most used items are in a drawer, on an upper shelf or in the front of a roll out or fixed shelf. Lesser and rarely used items get placed in the less convenient spots. That way, I have easy access to everything I need 90-95% of the time while keeping the flexibility of vertical space management with some non-drawer cabinets sprinkled in. My kitchen still gets messy but it always feels under control because I can zoom around the kitchen and get things put away quickly since a lot of nesting isn't involved. And I agree, our dw dish drawers have also helped with kitchen tidiness. It's a lot less daunting when only half a dw at a time has to be unloaded. I hated getting down on the floor in my old kitchen to find something on the shelf of a base cabinet. But I love the fixed shelf base cabinet that I have in my new kitchen because I was able to pick and choose the items that are best stored there. This type of cabinet offers more storage than any of my drawer or pull out cabinets. I think an all-or-nothing approach forces items to be stored in less than ideal spots. I would hate having my large bowls in a drawer but conversely, I would hate having my pots and pans on a fixed shelf. Adding some variety allows options and in mho, a better chance for optimizing storage.

Thanks Mary, Sorry I didn't answer your question sooner. With perfect hindsight the solution would be as you suggested - to order enough extras to make up for the unusable ones. Had I thought of it I would have ordered a whole bunch more and then returned the flawed tiles. Anyway, I have mapped out where the best tiles will go and have set aside the very worst tiles which we won't need to use since there are extras. I also made markings on some of the crappy ones that show which half is usable, so that they can be salvaged in corners or other places the tile will be cut. Anyway, what a pain! When all is said and done I plan to bring back the unused tile for a refund. Any that are leftover will be bad enough to be non-usable for anything else, so I'm hoping that at the very least I can get a few bucks back and make our unhappiness known. The backsplash gets installed tomorrow so I will be hovering nervously, but I am certain that it will look awesome when all is said and done. :)