I have the same set-up in a 3" x 8". It never occurred to me to tile it since I think of tile as being used in a wet room (bath or shower). I could picture it in an old home, but it would look out of place in my traditional home. So I'm not sure about tile for a contemporary home. I'd need to see some examples.

Can you post a photo, and give a few more hints about your style?

Like may_flowers, we have a 32-1/2" wide by 8' long powder room on our first floor; it is the place that all guests in our house use to "freshen up." The pocket door is midway on one of the long sides.

The main purpose of the remodel was to install an advanced "shower" toilet seat, so at one end of the powder room, we installed a Toto Vespin II toilet with an Inax Clessence advanced toilet seat. It has fully lived up to expectations.

At the other end, we installed a Cantrio Koncepts PS-004 sink, which was almost exactly the full width of the room, and fitted an Aquabrass "Streem" (their spelling) brushed nickel faucet to it. http://www.aquabrass.com/products/streem-77314-0 We built a tall backsplash behind and alongside the sink with mixed glass and ceramic tile as a do-it-yourself project. The main component was "il Vietri" burnt amber glass mosaic tile, which we purchased from S'Tile, 345 SE Yamhill Street, here in Portland.

Our biggest departure from convention was the lighting. We could find absolutely no bathroom lighting fixtures that were not either limited to exotic, expensive, nearly unobtainable, energy-wasting light bulbs, or in the alternative, butt-ugly. So, in the end, we kept our old $1.98 (honestly, I have no idea what we originally paid for it, but it was not a whole lot more than that) "barbell" wall fixture over the medicine cabinet/mirror, and replaced the 40-watt incandescent bulbs with 8-watt subjectively much brighter LED floods. http://www.lowes.com/pd_321124-75774-LPAR20DM/5K/LED_0__?productId=3408204&Ntt=Utilitech+led+flood+light

But because the LED floods are quite directional, we papered the walls with Rasch Barbara Becker Collection wallcovering, sold through the Internet Wallpaper Store as product #570631. That wall covering is very highly reflective, but has a textured surface that diffuses the light from the sideways pointed LED bulbs quite effectively, giving a bright but diffuse, complexion-flattering, light in front of the mirror, and enough "bounce" to effectively light the entire room from the bulbs above the mirror. With apologies for the long URL: http://www.wallpaperstore.com/scripts/Single.idc?Number=570631&PaperGroupID=570630&LogID=25902955&Page=0

The attached photo was taken when the project was 85-90 percent complete; the window above the toilet is reflected in the mirror over the sink.

Here is a link that might be useful: Cantrio Koncepts sink

No tile in our powder room...just paint.

Thanks all, for the input.

Herring, that's EXACTLY the sort of look I'm going for. Can you give more pictures and details? I want a powder room that will make a statement - yours is perfect!!!

What about wainscoting around the bathroom?

Or better yet- this: http://www.remodelaholic.com/2012/06/powder-room-transformed-molding-on-walls/

I've fallen in love with this bathroom and plan to do the same for my half-bath in the near future.

bererdmr: Herring, that's EXACTLY the sort of look I'm going for. Can you give more pictures and details? I want a powder room that will make a statement - yours is perfect!!! "

You are much too kind.

Apparently, I previously linked to another photo of that sink and backsplash in this forum in a 2011 April 6 posting in a thread called "grout and sealant question." There, I linked to a photo on my Smugmug account, and another poster kindly reposted the image as an in-line photo.

Here, I am posting a new photo (taken today) taken through the door on one of the long sides of the powder room; this mostly shows the "$1.98" cheap hardware store light fixture above the mirror/medicine cabinet that we decided to keep and design around. I wish that we could show the light "in operation," as it were, but when the camera is pointed straight at the light fixture, the light contrast is too great for our camera to capture the scene: highlights get blown out, while shadows block up. The attached imag was taken with on-camera flash, and the light of the flash reflecting off the mirror is responsible for what falsely appears to be narrow light colored band on the wall at the extreme right, as well as the diagonal division of light on the picture of Old Kenyon, the iconic building of our son's alma mater.

My earlier post also had more detail about the tile that we used in the backsplash: the small glass tiles are Senio "Il' Vetri": http://www.getstile.com/glass.htm, while the larger "pillow" ceramic tires are Senio Trapunta Bruno: http://www.mosaictileco.com/senio_trapunta_ceramic_tile.htm.

Bill Vincent will be shocked and appalled (sorry, Bill), but -- rather than the thinset mortar that we had used for our decade-earlier shower tile -- we attached the tile to the wall with Dow Corning 999-A, a remarkably versatile glazing sealant that we used "off label" as a mastic. The grout, both for the wide grout lines and the narrow grout lines, is Laticrete SpectraLock epoxy; I forget the exact shade, but it was named after some brown foodstuff (cinnamon, perhaps?).

The functional towel bar, seen at the bottom of the reflection in the mirror, is actually a medical supply grab bar, affixed through the lath and plaster to the studs behind; there is a twin across the narrow room attached vertically to the door frame next to where the photographer's elbow was when the photo was taken, and right in front of the Vespin II toilet.