I have similar concerns about too much white in my bathroom re-do. Currently, the bathroom is 50s pink n gray tile, so a lack of color will be a relief! I found a ceramic tile at Lowe's that looks like wood parquet. It matches the color of the hardwood in the hall by the bathroom. I am trying to copy an inspiration room on the Restoration Hardware website: white walls, dark stained vanity/mirror/wood floor. If you want to find the picture on the rh website, you have to look under the white bathroom rugs on the website. The tiles we purchased were a special order from Lowes and are about $4/sq. ft. Will keep up and see how your project turns out!

I'm sorry that I can't be very helpful here - I use autocad, which is both very expensive and pretty unfriendly to the user (it's really taken me years to get more than proficient at it). I'm not sure what others use - maybe photoshop and paint and stuff like that. I use gimp, which is a free "photoshop-like" type program to edit stuff but I'm not sure how good it is as a drawing tool. I know a lot of people use google sketchup but I'm not sure if that's good for your purposes either.

I'm not a huge fan of a stone BS with granite, but that's my personal taste. I agree travertine can look very heavy. Having said that, and without your slab photo, I just suggested someone take a look at this marble: Here's the general marble description (copied from a Houzz photo answer:) Like Bookmark March 11, 2016 at 1:31PM PRO thebuilderdepot It is likely The Athens silver Cream is an Incredible product. It essentially a vein cut marble that gives an almost wood look appearance. If you ever visit the new Four Seasons in Orlando it covers it. Additionally the hotels love it because it is low maintenance it is a hard marble and matches easily from Threshold to Mosaic as you can see from our website. It is a very, very consistent Marble. However as it is new to the market, there is a lot of names for it and with different names comes different prices. Our recommendation as with all products. Order a sample. Order a sample online and compare. Before things ship ask for pictures. Cover yourself. It can also be called a White Oak Marble Limestone also a silver cloud and a variety of other names in the market place. The confusion of the name allows for some seriously unreasonable price fluctuations considering the price per block. It is very similar in appearance or a few other names by other companies, available for $7.45 a Square Foot in Honed and Polished. Live Link to Builders Depot Collection

One rep from the high-end company came to take notes. He passed the job to the installers who did the demo and reinstall using the same tile. It was brick pattern as opposed to straight lay. I would have paid the upcharge. Needless to say, the installers weren’t exactly certified tile installation experts. Had they been, they would have questioned the change in pattern considering they were using the exact same tile.