Look on Houzz dot com for inspiration pictures on the different tile schemes. You will find many. It will help you with your decision making. You make this your bathroom not someone else's. I have a 8x9 bathroom and I did my shower pan in a gray cast iron that matches the gray in my very patterned dark tiled floor, and the gray in the porcelain marble shower wall tile. Very different tiles. It was love at first sight and others didn't see the beauty I saw in the combo. Then they came around. I checked out many other possibilities before settling on this combo. I kept coming back to it. I even have a heavily patterned walnut wood vanity and cabinets. The doors are patterned as well. Realizing that I was using several strong textures I kept every thing else at a minimum, that includes the towels, counter deco, wall deco, etc. It seems to work in my eyes and I can't wait to GET DONE with it. I am a slow DIY'er.

Thanks for the replies! Good point about keeping things in proportion with a 12" accent - looks like three tile wide mosaic might be the way to go. I like both options, but was a bit worried that three tile wide looks a bit chunky. But keeping things in proportion seems like a good idea. Edges will be trimmed with those aluminium edges. There will be a niche, but due to the constraints of our townhouse (back wall of tub is a shared wall with next door and the left wall is an exterior wall), the niche will be on the right wall (where the fixtures are) and will be two smaller vertically stacked niches (I kind of prefer the niche to be less visible anyway, as then people won't see all my bottles :p). So the back tub wall will be flat, without any disruptions to the vertical accent. The door to the bathroom is on the right side (when looking at the tub) at the far end, so when you enter, you sort of see more of the left side first than the right - so I thought I'd put the vertical stripe off-centre to the left. RE waterproofing - my contractor has used DenShield with mesh tape over seams/joints/edges/nails and then RedGuard on top of that

Hello! So your bathroom is really not all that large. If it were me, I would not do the same size tile on the floor and up the shower walls. The tile on the bathroom floor (12x24 is fine) should run parallel to the vanity. The tile in the shower floor should be small - 1x1 or 2x2 or 1x2, etc. - to give you more non-slippiness. The tile on the shower walls should be smaller than the floor...it could be the same material as the floor if you like, but just smaller. It certainly does not have to be the same as the floor though. Something different might give you some really great visual interest. Have you chosen a floor tile yet? Or a color scheme?

I used marble look porcelain and since it already is a busy pattern I prefer to do a straight layout, so you aren't adding more business to the look. I used 30x30 on the master floor. For the walls/shower, again I did straight set and used 24x24 tiles. I also wouldn't have paired a patterned counter with patterned tile, visually for me, it just becomes too much pattern. Why the tile beyond the shower opening? I would have run that bullnose all the way down to the floor.