With the "givens" in your bathroom of teenage boy, oak windows, oak floors and a vintage tub, I immediately thought of a navy blue and white color scheme. I'd love to see navy towels, but I learned the hard way that teenagers need WHITE or nearly white towels because they use acne products with benzyl peroxide which will bleach any colored towel. Even if your son doesn't use that stuff, some of their friends do so don't go there. So what about White Wainscotting, Navy rug, Navy on the outside of the tub, Navy/white stripe walls? Maybe some Khaki?Tan color for accent? Or reverse it and have Khaki/Tan with a little Navy for accent? Does your son have any vote on this?

Thanks for the feedback and ideas. The varnish idea is intriguing; I think I've seen similar applications and they end up looking very shiny and not a match for the paint. This is not so terrible, but would be a bit of a different look. Are there any varnish-type products which would have a more neutral finish? Also do you think I'd need to varnish the ceiling as well to protect from condensation, or only on the walls which would be receiving direct 'splashes'? We are leaning towards keeping the tub, and retrofitting it with a shower. The idea of a hand-held European-style shower is very appealing; we're wondering if maybe a ceiling-mounted curtain ring would be sufficient to prevent splashes if the shower hardware were somehow mounted inside the curtain, maybe from a bar mounted to the ceiling? We did something similar to a clawfoot tub in our previous house - link added to show what that may look like. It would be a tricky install since the curtain ring would probably need to be mounted at the same angle as the slope of the ceiling. We would probably just leave the current tub faucet set in place and add another faucet set that operates just the shower. There's not really an economical way to create space for a separate shower, changing the footprint of the room is off-the-table for us at this point. Here is a link that might be useful: clawfoot shower system

I can see a few options, the first two I consider more viable and the second two I'm not so big on: a) Use the white you're putting on the trim on the other side of the doorway for this room's trim and beadboard. Unless the undertones clash, white beadboard will not look odd if it's also on the trim, especially if fixtures such as tub, sinks, and toilet are also white. You don't say if they are or not. FWIW, the bath in my previous house combined almond tile with bright-white fixtures (and a little bit of white trim tile) and it looked very sharp if I say so myself. :-) (Trim and beadboard were stained oak.) b) Paint trim and beadboard SW Navajo White - this is the lightest shade on the Ivoire strip - or even cut that half and half with white so that it is still registering as "white" but not stark white. This is probably the approach I would take, especially if your fixtures are not white. You do NOT have to paint both sides of a door and its trim the same color (especially if you're one of those people who prefers to keep the bathroom door closed all the time) - in my previous house, the hallway trim was white but the MBR trim was stained oak. Worked just fine even though we left the MBR door open most of the time. c) Paint trim AND beadboard Ivoire, but your vanity will fade off into the background. This one strikes me as a little blah, personally, since the floor tile is also very similar in tone to the Ivoire and you'd end up with a "sea of beige" with a little green. Especially if your fixtures are also almond/beige/etc. - yikes! If you go that route, accessorize heavily with things that are NOT beige and that do have some contrast (darker shades of the green, for example) and get some interesting hardware for the vanity to wake it back up some. d) Treat the beadboard simply as a textural addition to the wall rather than a trim element and paint it the green, and paint the trim the color of the hallway trim (assuming those undertones don't clash, as I said). It depends on whether you think of the beadboard wainscot as wall or trim - whether they are beadboard, board-and-batten, or raised-panel, I think of wainscots as trimwork rather than wall so this approach isn't to my own taste, but others like it.

My $.02: I don't think picture-frame wainscoting is stylistically appropriate or practical for a bathroom. Also, painted MDF could seem cheap, especially in a home with solid wood wainscoting in other rooms, and I'm not sure how it would hold up it in a room/climate that is subject to mold. While I like true beadboard in vintage baths, it's often used just because it's trendy, fast, and cheap (if you use any of the various imitation beadboard products). Beadboard would look good with your Memoirs toilet and pedestal sink, but may seem too cottage-y for the rest of your house. My first preference would be for tile wainscoting, which need not be expensive in a small space if you shop around and do the tiling yourself. Are you really sure you can't use it? Unless the seasonal movement is really extreme (in which case you must have problems with all of your walls and wainscoting), you should be able to use tile as long as you have the proper surface, use small tiles, and flexible grout. (I'm no expert, but that's what I've been told.) Another option would be to simply install a chair rail around the perimeter of the room. You could then use different colors for the upper and lower walls, or paint the lower wall and use wallpaper or stenciling on the upper part (although extreme house movement could sabotage wallpaper).