Kiwi_bird If you see this, I would LOVE to see photos of your completed shower. I just stumbled upon this post and what you were doing sounds almost exactly what we are in the middle of doing in our master shower/bath. 3x12 white subway tiles in shower, hex black slate on shower floor, 12/24 black slate (herringbone) on floor, with white carrera (light grey veining) on vanities, shower threshold and floating shower seat. The shower wall tile is installed as is the shower floor and I'm nervous as right now the shower walls look quite NY subway stark and the floor contrasting. The plan is to run the subway tiles 'through' the niche, but after looking at a lot more photos and discussions, I'm wondering if putting the marble in the back of the niche would be elegant and give some nice contrast in the shower without too much contrast and drama/issues w/the slate/hex tiles. The shower is quite large so right now it's a LOT of white subway, LOL!

A VERY handsome option: Dark treads with light/white risers! Super handsome. You can have your cake and eat it too! Go with the light wood (just as you wanted) and then use the dark treads to punctuate the design of the stair case. The risers can have the same pale tones as the wood floor to keep that 'match' going. I have an issue with the look of the floating staircase in your photo. The staining on the treads/risers is not the best. I can see variations where the stain didn't take as well as it should have. And being THE CENTRE PIECE of the space (a stair like that will smack you in the face and make you take it out for dinner because it is a DIVA) there is no place for a poor stain job to hide. A painted riser gets rid of the chances you will see the bad stain job. I'm assuming the same people who built this home will be building yours (are you in the same community?) which means it is HIGHLY POSSIBLE the same 'guys' who had issues with this stain job will have more issues on another project. Just something to consider.

Long story, but in a nutshell...We’ve been out of our house for a month and a half at this point and have had nothing but one headache after another. We’ve already had our floors sanded and stained three times. The first time was a bad sanding job so we fired the contractor and found another. The new contractor resanded and stained with the color we chose but we weren’t happy as it didn’t match the sample. We had him sand and stain again. That’s when we wound up with the perfect color but ran out of stain. After spending literally two days on the phone with someone at Bona’s corporate office, as well as with the Bona area rep, we had gotten no further. We wound up using other colors to try our best to match what we have on the rest of the floor. Of course, it doesn’t really match. Needless to say, my excitement at finding the perfect color for our floors has been squashed. Although there is no way to hide the color difference in the area on the main floor where the two colors meet, I am now trying to figure out ways to hide the stairs (paint, runner, etc.).

Do you mean coordinate? Because I think a match like you show will be a washout in a basement. For a basement room, first, make sure you have good lighting. Do not paint the walls a light color. It isn’t going to make the room brighter or warmer. A bolder, saturated color is what you want on the walls. After all, you will never be in the basement without turning on the lights. This B.M. color, spice gold is a winner with onyx tones. Use is with bright white trim and the same white for ceilings. Add the gray with your largest piece: