This is kind of an off topic question. I like the look of antiques with vessel sinks. How are you concealing the plumbing? is there some kind of special, shallow P trap configuration or are you skirting the vanity with fabric maybe?

I like the various elements, but I feel that whatever you chose is going to get lost in that design of uneven mirrors and unmatched lighting. I think the mosaic panel will add to the confusion. Is there a way to simplify your design?

I like the idea of getting rid of the dark sanitary base. You could use wood baseboard if you don't want to caulk to the ground. It would go ok with your antique look I think. What is happening with the stool under the second mirror? Is there supposed to be another table there? Could you hang the two mirror at the same level and just not have lights over it? The one part I can't picture is how the swanstone looks with the marble tiles. Maybe that'd be too much marble--so perhaps a plainer wall tile would be better. I like the mosaic piece but think it might be better in a bigger area--what's over the tub? Or else you could do it across the wall behind the mirrored cabinets. It's perhaps a different style than the vanity and the black trim idea you've got going on--so maybe you'd have to choose one or the other?

Benjesbride, the plumbing will be partially hidden by the drawer front, then the apron under the drawer front. We shall see if that does the trick. I don't know yet if it will show. It was a small consideration for me. The whole thing pushing this remodel is my disability. I have a connective tissue disorder. That means that my ligaments and tendons are not made correctly. My kneecaps have been dislocating since I was in my mid teens. At 56 now, I need at least one side of my left knee replaced, but that is not recommended for those of us with this disorder. When you stretch out the ligaments and tendons to put the new knee in place, they do not recover. The knee remains unstable. So I am not going to get new knees and hips. The bathroom needs to be wheelchair-friendly, just in case I end up using one.

May_Flowers, the lighting is more matched than it appears in the Sketch-Up. I ran out of photos to attach just as I got to the picture of the lighting above the lower mirror. This is the Mercer Double Sconce.

I didn't even notice the accessible design choices. Your design is very thoughtful. In our renovation we tried to be mindful of toilet clearance, wall space for grab bars, etc and it made me start to look at design differently.

I prefer simple design, so my vote would be for the simplest of tile choices with your pretty vanity being the focus and keeping it all as easy-care as possible e.g. no base boards that need hands and knees attention.

To lessen calm the busyness of that wall, you could install a full length medicine cabinet at the same height as the mirror above the sink and a recessed light above the toilet. When looking at the full length mirror from a wheel chair, I'd think your face would be lit nicely from each side by the sconce and the ceiling light rather than straight down from the light you're considering. Like this? (excuse the amateur cutting and pasting.)

If you have ample storage in a full length medicine cabinet, you wouldn't need a medicine cabinet above the sink and could instead use a mirror that can be tilted down so you can see yourself at the sink from a seated position. Like this one from pottery barn that looks great with your sconces:

So I'm guess I'm proposing this :-)

Edwina1330, in trying to not write a book, I left out a lot from my original post. We are taking out the original tub. There have been leaks behind it since before we moved in, and the rotting floor under the tub is the reason behind the remodel in the first place. Since I don't know if I will always be able to walk, we are switching to a roll-in shower. The color of the shower is shown in the Swanstone photo above. I will be using their new roll-in base with a trench drain on the outer edge, though. Here is a picture .

The door will be opening outward, into the hall.

Benjesbride, the biggest problem with your idea is that I have owned the two medicine cabinets for over a year. Everything that I have posted individual pictures of (except tile and the swanstone shower) I already own.

The simplest tile, installation-wise, is the true marble, 12 x 12 tiles. They look busy, though, because each tile will be unique. But there will be just that one pencil molding to finish off the top. What do think about this?

The white tiles can be simple, too. I don't have to do a listello if that is too busy. I can just finish the top with a chair rail molding of Carrara and have a Carrara baseboard, too. The counter top being Carrara will tie it together enough to justify the use of Carrara on the wall. A gray floor is a good choice here to cut down on busy-ness.

OH BTW - one must click on that Sketch-Up of the shower wall, it is cut off on both ends unless you enlarge it.

My original floor idea was basketweave, but I started to see it as too busy lately. I am not sure now. It will not be marble in any case, it has to be porcelain. I have an elderly dog who needs to pee in the night or when we are gone at times. He uses a mat in the bathroom. No marble there! I have been moving toward large pieces of porcelain since that is what is in the stores, probably to minimize grout, as well. I like the contrast of a darker gray. Here is a picture from the tile shop. I went back yesterday for pictures. This is a dark gray floor with the Meram Polished marble leaning against the rack. I used the display piece and the two loose 12 x12s they had on hand. The small gray and white 6 x 6 piece is my Swanstone sample.

See why I went gaga over this marble? My Swanstone looks like it belongs with this stuff! Here is a close up, then a close up of the far left piece of marble.

This is the marble I would use on the bathroom walls up to the windowsill, then top with a pencil molding. I would get a nice piece of Carrara for the counter top, and call it quits. I would look for a piece of art for over the toilet, maybe. That is Style 3.

Style 2 is the green tile. I took pictures of it with the 1/2" mosaic called St. Lucia. I thought that they would go perfectly together when I saw the mosaic, and yesterday I brought the green tile with me and I was right. Here is a picture of the green tile and the St. Lucia with the two pieces of pencil molding I would use to set off the strip of mosaic at the top.

I doctored this photo to get the green to show, I slid the "saturation" bar on my photo software all the way to full to get the color to come through. The St. Lucia is very subtly colored, this is an exaggerated shot. It is an iridescent finish, though. Here is an undoctored shot, below.

I love the subtle blues and tans in there with the greens and pearly whites. This color combo may allow me to paint the vanity a very pale blue, violet, or periwinkle. The floor can be a porcelain carrara look-alike. I possibly could make a decorative panel of the St. Lucia mosaic over the toilet.

Here is the Houzz bathroom that made me fall in love with this green tile.

Vintage apothecary bathroom · More Info

Then Style 1 remains my original white tile. I love the classic art deco white with black look.

Family Fun · More Info

Art Deco Bathroom · More Info

Instead of the greige tile, I would have a Carrara tile or narrow strip of pearl tile . I would also skip the extra black outline on the floor and the extra black molding partway up the wall. I do love all that tile around the window, though! I am such a lousy housekeeper, I probably have no business looking at black tile at all. I just love the look. White tile with Carrara trim remains a possibility with Style 1, lets call it Style 1a.

Summit · More Info

Like this, except my shower is gray and white Swanstone. Floor can be black and white basketweave in porcelain or a fake Carrara. Or even a light gray. Contrast is important as you age. With carrara molding, I might splurge for that Climbing Vines panel above the toilet. Doesn't anyone think if I placed it even with the first mirror that it would provide balance so the sunken mirror looks better?

My vote is for style 3. You're right, that marble looks great with your swanstone and seeing it next to the large porcelain I can see that it all coordinates nicely. It's pretty and interesting alone, but neutral enough that you can choose any artwork and vanity color you want. The bonus would be that it's easy-care, as long as the floor grout is dark.

It is the only thing I have ever seen that makes my plastic Swanstone look less like plastic. The marble is available in either the polished tile I showed or in a brushed look that looks even closer to the Swanstone, but does not have the gleam of polished marble.

Hi there Nancy, I haven't read through everything. Maybe some of my thoughts have been mentioned.

Could you put another of the long scones to the right of your sit down mirror area?

I love that color of your vanity with that peachy wall behind it. Reminds me of Downton Abby's Drawing Room color scheme.

Your tile mosaic in your first post is beautiful. I am not sure how it was to be used. But I did see several comments from others that there is too much going on with that and your other elements. Could you make a picture framed panel out of it and hang it above the toilet area as a piece of art? I have some fake paintings (a pair) next to my toilet and I really like it. Your vanity wall is laid out like my second bathroom, mine is 10 feet long instead of 8.

I really love my 18" depth vanity in my first bathroom, I can really get close to the mirror. Your vanity will be great for your DH to shave at that mirror because a deeper vanity won't keep him back from the mirror.

Hi Enduring,
Actually, the sconces have come down in price at Pottery Barn recently. I could possibly get one more and use it next to the lowered mirror. Then I am faced with what height to set it at. I guess I could put it at the same height as the others. the top could be even with the top of the lower mirror. Then I would want the middle sconce to be moved halfway between the two mirrors, I would think. I might be able to move the leftmost mirror the same distance away, too, but I will have to check.

The shelf on the wall next to the vanity does not stick out as it does in the picture. There is a small in-wall med cab there that is original to the house a a bit yucky inside. I was going to take it out and simply put tiled shelves in its place. I could not find anything to approximate it in Sketch-Up.

Yes, the mosaic tile in my first post is meant to be a panel over the toilet to offset the left mirror and balance the room. Others have thought that it would add to the busyness of the room, instead. If I went with Style 3 - the 12 x 12 marble tiles in the first 3 pictures of today's first post, I could do the Climbing Vines mural outlined in Carrara molding above the toilet. Then I could chose a paint color for the vanity from the colors in the mosaic.

Here is a pic of my west bathroom with the "art work" :

Nice art work! I knew violet would look nice with Carrara. Is this the bathroom with the shower walls from Lowes in faux Carrara? I am considering adding a second window to the bedroom next to my shower space. All of our rooms have a single window, and I wonder if I would go in this room more if it were sunny. It is my exercise/PT/craft room.

If you could add an extra window in your bedroom, that would be great for the winter sunshine. Anything to get us into our healthy activities. You can take that anyway you'd like ;

My shower walls are a porcelian calacatta tile from Atlas Concordia. I haven't used any Lowes tiles. You might be thinking of someone else.

The "art" is a reproduction of a famous Japanese woodcut; from the 1800's if believe. They are just sections of the terrific wave forms from the original. These are something I picked up for my first bathroom, but they didn't go. I hung on to them and thought they looked good in this second bathroom.

I have a whole lot of extra stuff around the house from these remodels. I was just looking at all the money I spent on paint samples, its embarrassing. But I have the right colors in both my bathrooms, lol.

Yes, I must have you confused with someone else. I can see the shower now, there is a square rainshower head there. Sorry. I plead Fibro Fog, EDS Brain and whatever we call the same phenomenon we get with Lipedema. I got a lot wrong with my brain.

Well, DH and I went to the tile store tonight. Interestingly, the marble tiles did not look as white under the artificial light as they did with the sun shining, too. He did like the marble tile a lot. I got the idea, after we looked at a number of combinations of using the white ceramic tiles a field tiles, to use the Meram Carrara Brushed tiles as a wide listello. That seemed to work the best. It cost only $130 for a box of 90 3x6 tiles. They really tie in the flat gray and white Swanstone without creating as much pattern as doing the entire wall would have.

Enduring, I was thinking that your art work behind the toilet reminded me of the Great Wave with Mt. Fuji in the background. I love that.

Nancy, I like the Swanstone look you chose. I'm fond of soft gray and white and (in my case) an earthy soft yellow ochre. Not so much into green or blue on walls, although I have a soft sage exterior trim on our white house, with a gray/green roof. That's as far as I go with green, except for my green hostas!. :) We don't have a roll-in shower stall, just one with a low threshold. It isn't wide enough for a wheelchair to roll into it. Our outdoor shower (still under construction) will be at deck level and open, with a stainless 4x4 shower pan. It is designed to shower the parrot in his large cage. However, you might consider that your shower with the roll-in feature can give you room for turning the wheelchair? Is it positioned at the toilet end of the bathroom?

The folks at Smaller Homes Forum bring design considerations to the forum, and as time goes by they evolve into far different concerns. I remember you had to dig up your living room, and you created the music room, and now you are working on a bathroom for special needs. I admire your positive attitude, the way you adjust to what life brings your way. Good for you!

Thanks for the comments, ML, you may be the first to like the Swanstone color! I want to use their product due to their accessible, wheel-in shower pan, but dislike the speckled look of most of their colors and the plastic look of their solids. I like their color Golden Steppe, but worry that I will tire of this color bathroom. The bathroom has already been gold since we moved here ten years ago. Golden Steppe:

It is a bright and sunny color, though!

The other color Swanstone makes that tries to look like current stone colors is Mountain Haze. It never was quite in the running with me, too much brown. Too sad. Mountain Haze:

Well, the box of marble tiles that I received for my decorative strip did not match my Swanstone after all. It came in with more cream and tan coloration than white and gray. I took it back and bought tumbled Carrara tiles on 12 x 12 sheets that are matte like the Swanstone. They had enough sheets in the store so that I could pick out the sheets that I wanted. There is a bit of sparkle to the stone, which is nice. The liners are white polished marble, not a veined Carrara, but looks good with the white wall tile. I got the sheets with the most gray in them, but would have wanted more gray if there were sheets with more gray stones on them. So it is not perfect, but is better than what I had.

My bad news is that I called my contractor to discuss floor tile and learned that I am stuck with getting a mosaic tile because we are waterproofing the bathroom floor and sloping it as if it were a shower. Nothing interesting to be seen in my price range here! I now will either be splurging for an expensive floor, or getting something plain. I have lots of time to decide though, be cause of the REALLY bad news. Jim, my contractor, will still be working on the commercial job he has been on for the past two years for the next 4 to 6 months. So no bathroom remodel this summer!

Wow, here I am almost 8 months later and there is very little progress toward our bathroom! No word at all from Jim, the contractor. I wonder if he is still doing the commercial job or if he even wants our work. Plus, Toby, our dog, is even older now - 16 - and on prednisone, so he is peeing a lot. He has doggy dementia, too. He is not terribly confused, not enough to put him down, but there is no way I want new, clean grout on that floor. The bathroom is on hold until he decides to take a trip over the rainbow bridge.

I have just contracted to replace the last four windows in the house. The aluminum sliders will be gone in 6 weeks or less! We are getting an awning window for the bathroom with a blind in the glass that can be raised and lowered. It is our sunniest room, and light from that window lights up the whole end of the hallway. I wanted the option to raise the blinds up. The three bedrooms are getting double casement windows with blinds in the glass. Hey - I don't clean, so the blinds are a major, major plus for us! Now I have to get windowsills for all three bedrooms. And for the bathroom, the need for a windowsill is forcing me to decide on the counter top for the vanity. It seems to me that they should be the same material. Tomorrow I am going to try to find the Cambria Quartz source for the area. I want the place where I can get a leftover piece of someone else's slab, since I need such a small piece. My vanity is only 18" x 46". I am hoping for the color called Parys.

[houzz=https://www.houzz.com/photos/cambria-countertop-2010-traditional-kitchen-phvw-vp~2704735]

Since I still have not chosen the color for the wall tiles in the bathroom, the color for the vanity top is going to determine what direction we go, since it is the next critical decision that I have to make. I like Parys because it is dark and will contrast with the white sink. It will also contrast with all the different wall tiles I have considered. I especially love the glowing blue bits in it. It reminds me of my favorite stone I use when making jewelry, Labradorite! It has that chatoyancy, that glow when it catches the light just right. Opal also does that. Parys just glows in any light.

Other things I have made progress on have to do with the vanity. I have sanded it and have decided to replace the original drawer pulls. No way will we enjoy finding the little bail that recedes into a groove on those babies. I am going to fill the holes and then drill one center hole and use a glass knob with chrome in the center. I had already purchased three of them to use on the new cupboards that I was adding into the wall across from the vanity.

I have also removed the metal floor protectors on the bottom of the 8 vanity legs and discovered that the small feet that can be leveled that I purchased will fit into the ends of the legs. Holes have to be drilled for them. Because the floor will be made waterproof, and sloped toward a drain, if I did not put levelers into the feet of the vanity, the whole thing would be unlevel and the sink would not drain properly. A and C below make up my leg levelers.

Yes, I do try to think of everything. When you have THREE YEARS to do nothing but plan, you do a lot of planning!

I have also purchased the shower plumbing - the rainhead, the shower temperature balancing valve, and three volume controls, one for the rain head, one for the shower head, and one for the hand-held, and the controls will each have those labels on them! I already had the shower head. I still have to decide on the hand-held system.

I also purchased a really cute hand towel holder. I don't like the rings because the towel gets bunched and does not dry well. This one is from Ginger and it has two bars that move on a swivel, independently of each other. The bars are 12 inches long and the holder holds them a good 2" away from the wall. Plus, since they swivel the whole way around, if one is particularly wet, you can pull it away from the wall and it will hang perpendicular to the wall as you wait until it is dry. In this picture, they show the arms out away from the wall. Normally, they will hang closer to the wall that the thing is mounted on, I would think. For instance, I plan to hang it on the wall to the side of the vanity. The arms would be folded up close to the wall most of the time. I suppose you could install it on the wall next to the medicine cabinet and have the towels hang over the vanity area, if you liked.