You say you have a traditional ranch and indeed there were many ranchers built in the last century that were styled traditional instead of MCM. Are your furnishings also traditional? The first inspiration picture you show is more traditional than the second one. I am not a fan of the all over marble look, but some people are. I suggest you filter your search on photos to transitional style if you're trying to update without being too modern. When you go to sell your house everyone is going to appreciate a bathroom that has been remodeled in this century. :-) Just don't do anything too far out there and you'll be fine. But understand the payback on a full bathroom remodel is not 100%. Although the way prices have been rising lately maybe it will end up being 100%. My point is, don't remodel for resale. Hopefully you're going to be able to enjoy what you do for several years first.

Our home is decorated in an eclectic style mixing transition with a bit of contemporary.

I'd update every chance you get as long as it's high-end updating.....and it is! I like the quartz walls, white vanity photo. Classy!

Oh my. I actually like that sink!

I get what you are saying. I believe your inspiration pictures will look out of sync with this style home.

I would focus on the kitchen first which is a common area that you spend lots of time in.

Your bathrooms while old, look fine and can certainly wait.

It’s going to look like a tie-dye miniskirt on your grandma. Trying way too hard to be something it isn’t, and in something that will be a laughable fad in just a few years.

I think your bathrooms look more dated than your kitchen, so I agree with your prioritizing the bathroom remodels ahead of the kitchen. Here's something that isn't as busy as the all marble bathroom or as modern as your other inspiration photo:

Stevenson · More Info

You could use the marble look tiles in the tub surround. The large format porcelain marble look tiles when not installed by an expert installer can end up with unattractive patterns in the veining, so I actually like smaller format tiles when using a marble look. The slate-look floor and white counter calms down the overall appearance of the room.

I have to warn you that there are many postings on this forum of bad penny tile installations. You have to pay an expert installer a lot of money to do a good penny tile install. If you like a smaller format tile hexagons are easier to work with. I put them on the floor of the shower I did last year.

I think both of those uber 2010s-20s baths will not age all that well in your house, there would really be nothing wrong with updating with a medium sized square tile much like what is there and a hex floor, rather than penny tile, both of which were around the time your house was built. It doesn't need to look original but the more universally compatible it is with the origins of the house the better it will look for the Next 40 or 50 years as opposed to looking already dated in under ten. They will look fine in houses that are all that style, but not so much inserted into something that is not that style.

I am seriously thinking about making you an offer for that flowered sink.

The sink is a Kohler Artists Edition English Trellis Pattern.

There was a toilet, too.

This pattern is from the 1990s.

The drop in sinks are usually listed for over $1000 and the pedestal sinks over $2000, so don't just trash it, even if you get a hundred dollars for it.

Marble is going in everywhere right now, but a bathroom with anything other than minimal bits of marble, in any house other than a very expensive house between about 1920 and 2000-odd was really unheard of. And penny tile really was not at all common during that same period. A 1960s "nice" bathroom would have had a 2-4" hex, 2"-3" square, or text patterned porcelain tile floor and 4.25" or 6" square wall tile, most likely, or the clipped corner floor yours has, and possibly a marble countertop on a wooden vanity at the most, or more likely a laminate or cultured marble top. A lot of more average bathrooms of the period may have had a vinyl floor and some sort of one piece tub or shower in fiberglas or cultured marble or even Masonite. I am not saying you have to go with plastic just because it was around, but baths were relatively utilitarian in most houses of the period and I don't think having the most lavish materials in the house in a bathroom is that appropriate to a house of your period even though that's what is popular now.

Your comments are great. Thank you. I'm dialing down the walls and floors. Perhaps white subway tile on the wall and gray tile on the floor?

You may move someday and are worried about sale ability, and yet you bought a house with a builders grade kitchen, flowered sink and a low ceilinged shower. Please, remove these imaginary people that may someday buy your house from the equation of if and how you should or shouldn’t renovate your bathroom. And unless you have the power to time travel and are moving your house back to a time when it was new, you don’t have to keep to a 55 year old standard of this is what was appropriate then. It’s not then now, your bathroom should please and function for you today, because you’re going to spend a whole bunch of money on it, and time, and it’s going to be messy and disruptive and doing all of that for white subway tiles when you really wanted something else is just crazy.

@palimpsest nailed it re: value of sink, Grand Millennial fans will scoop it up.

"1980s contractor grade kitchen update" sounds disparaging for what looks like a pretty nice kitchen over all. My question is does the kitchen FIT the home? Putting super high end finfishes in an average suburban home will get you little return on investment. Buyers in this price range won't have the extra money to pay for fancy when they just want a functional home. I say your bath being as dated as it is--is more jarring than a reasonable update would be. No reason to break the bank. Updated finishes will go a long way, but no reason to pretend it's a spa.

My reasoning has nothing to do with resale or the tastes of some future anonymous buyer. It has to do with the bathroom having a sense of place in the house it is in.

I am not, and I don't think anybody is saying that the OP has to find harvest gold fixtures or in any way recreate a bathroom that looks 55 years old. But for longevity, and for the Long Term satisfaction of the OP I find it's generally better to not do something that is so obviously completely in the fashion of the moment, in a house that is not otherwise completely in the fashion of the moment. There should be some sort of consistency, rather than being able to walk through and say " This bathroom was done in 2000, this one in 2015" etc.

Ideally it will just look more or less good with the house overall

I know I keep chiming in, but I think there are a couple of interesting phenomena in the Houzz /Gardenweb forums and this relates to one of them.

When people are picking paint colors--wall colors, trim colors, flooring, and when people want to use wallpaper, say in an entire room, the common advice is that all the flooring and all the trim color should match through the entire house and the paint color of every room, more or less, needs to relate to all the other colors throughout the entire house, or the house will lack consistency, will not "flow" properly (I hate that word used this way it reminds me of toilets), will appear chopped up. And people will lose their minds if you want to do distinctly different wall colors in every room or put different wallpaper in two adjoining rooms.

But when it comes to kitchens and bathrooms and things that cost $50,000 or more, and you are likely to never want to redo it again in your life because the process is torture and you need a sledge hammer to change anything, lots of people are totally down for responding to the most Pinterest-y of the moment faddish look out there and then get on anybody's back who tries to talk them down and get them to think about how it will look with the rest of the house.

Also because someone didn't see, in person, a particular material in the past, doesn't mean that it wasn't used. The first house we bought in 1999, built in the mid 1980s had a master bathroom with large marble tile on the floor, shower and tub surround. Yes, it was real marble, but the feel of the room was the same as the ones with marble-look porcelain we see today.

My bathroom looked very similar to the marble bathroom inspiration photo the OP posted above. So has that "trend" been around for 37 years or did a cheaper, more durable tile material make it more accessible to a larger number of people? I think marble or marble look tiles will continue to be a popular choice for bathrooms for a long time!

You don't have a 1960s bathroom anyway, so you can either do a retro bathroom or one that you actually like. :)

We updated our 1964 guest bath 5 years ago. We kept the tub as it’s the only one in the house. We replaced the fiberglass surround with matte white subway tile with gray grout. We put in a niche. We replaced the faucets and shower spray. We had a custom vanity, a new sink and a marble counter top installed. The countertop is a remnant we found at a stone yard. We installed large dark gray matte tiles on the floor. We also installed a mirror/medicine cabinet. We removed the glass shower door and now use a shower curtain. We had two floating shelves installed over the toilet.

Marble never really stopped being used in bathrooms, it just wasn't particularly common or seen in the great quantities that it is showing up in, in some otherwise modest houses now. But the tract house my parents bought in 1958 had a marble threshold and window sill in an otherwise plain bathroom and my 1950s college dorm had marble shower stalls and toilet partitions, but that was for durability, they certainly weren't worried about matching veining and such.

I am not sure why this has to be about having either a bathroom you like or one you don't like, really that sort of either/or is sort of predicated on the idea that the only bathroom someone is going to like is the one that is currently fashionable and if you do something that is not currently fashionable, then you aren't going to like it. Or that the "appropriate" sort of bathroom for an older rather than brand new trend-laden house is always going to be something disappointing. The alternative to the Pinterest bathroom du jour is not automatically terrible or ugly or dated bathroom, I don't buy it.

Back when I actually did design kitchens and bathrooms for people, there were a few people who thought this way, if it wasn't completely the most current thing to be seen, they weren't going to be happy when it was done. And I spent a lot of time talking them out of picking every shiny object that caught their eye because I knew that infatuation would not last. In the six months between when they picked something out and when it was installed they already liked something else better, and that's when it's still new, not after it's been in the house for years like a bathroom is.

Don't believe it? I have been around these forums long enough that I have seen plenty of people who seven years ago said "Oh do this, it's timeless it's classic, it's perfect" and now they are saying how ugly and tired and overdone that same thing is. If it's a pair of shoes, fine whatever you can throw them away after wearing them a couple times. But very few people are going to redo an entire tile job every few years when it is now longer the best thing on Pinterest.

Of the two bathrooms the OP posted, the first one is very handsome, and it's all white which is never really a problem, my question is "Is that much marble really a good fit in an older house which probably has otherwise pretty modest finishes that may not be changing". The second one, I think is the sort of thing that is not great design now, it's probably the harvest gold bathroom of the future. It pushes a lot of Pinterest buttons for being photogenic and making lots of good vignettes and such, but I don't think it's well designed, it's eye-catching in media.

I agree with palimpsest: a bathroom design that checks every box for current trends may seem incongruous and will likely age poorly. To my eye, the first inspiration photo is too all-out glam for what I think the rest of the house is like, and the second one, despite the obligatory freestanding tub, which the OP won't have, and the gold fixtures, looks institutional. I would like neither white marble - the OP mentioned beige - everywhere nor acres of white subway tile, but I have to disclose that I've been told in this forum that I have no taste whatsoever, so I won't be hurt if others disagree.

If it were up to me, I would keep the sink but change the counter and the color of the walls.

I like the sink. i purchased stone hex to try and match the mink color of my old shower as i decided not to rip it out, just scrub it up and keep it. Still in process…

Some marble, even in an unassuming bathroom, is charming. Covering everything that doesn't move in marble tile would not suit your home, IMO.

I like the marble bath. I hate the second idea.

I love that sink! I rather hope you'll re-use it in the remodel. I think it would look lovely with a new white floor tile (or beige if you prefer) and a nice new countertop, faucet, and vanity. It's not something I would necessarily choose from the store, but if it were my bathroom remodel I would absolutely re-use it.

Just my opinion, but for resale purposes I would avoid doing tile all over the walls of the bathroom. I think a nice floor tile and wall tile in the shower area only would be more broadly appealing. That way if the tile you choose isn't their favorite, they won't be saying "Ugh I wish there wasn't BEIGE all over the walls!". (That is absolutely something I could see myself saying while touring a house.) Whereas if you have nice fairly neutral floor tile, it's less overpowering in a bathroom.

Remember glass mosaic tile from about 7 years ago? Everyone loved it back then and thought it was a great forever trend. HA!

Anything that is “in” will eventually go “out.” People get tired of seeing it everywhere. It sticks in their minds as belonging to the timeframe of when it was “in.” To avoid this, use one of the more classic looks. In a classic look, you can use some currently trendy items. Here is my bathroom. Is is in a 1978 single story home (generally called a ranch, but is neither a western ranch style nor a modern MCM-style home.) It is a builder-grade home where the builder did not even bother to put ceiling light fixtures in the bedrooms, opting for a outlet with a switch, instead. There is one full bath next to the three bedrooms and a half bath between the laundry room and the kitchen.

I needed our only shower/tub combo to become a wheelchair accessible shower. We already have put a ramp up from the family room to the 6” higher rest of the house and when we replaced the living room slab concrete floor, we raised its height to meet the foyer’s height instead of 4” to 6” shorter than the foyer as it had been originally. I have a 4” aluminum ramp that spans the height difference between the foyer and the height of the rest of the house. It can be installed if I ever need a wheelchair. We have a ramp outside to the front door made of Trex that does not look like a temporary add-on. So, I had already fixed all the other problems this house had with accessibility. We knew from the house hunting we did when we bought this house that there were similar floor height differences in most of the houses in our price range, so it made no sense to look for a house with more bathrooms before taking out our only tub. This house will be paid off in ten years.

I had chosen a shower with a marble look. I like the classic tile and trim look with chunky chair rails and baseboards. I had a cache of grayish Carreras trim pieces left over from an house remodel that someone had sold on Craigslist very cheaply. So, I ordered a modern pearly gray subway tile with a bit of ripple to the finish, and this is the result.

glass mosaic tile

Ha! I was all set to put it in, but fortunately the one I had in mind was discontinued before I could buy it.