Modern rustic: 12x24" porcelain tile made to resemble a wide piece of distressed wood. Not an overtly obvious wood grain, more of an implied grain that you only see after studying it for a minute. Rectified and small grout joint. (Form follows function in design- easy to live with is always first!) option B: a vein cut travertine patterned 12x24 in brown or gray tones. Set in a soldier corse, straight stack pattern, so it's not about the grout joints, it's more about the linear pattern of the tile.

We did a heavy textured tile (each tile also has a different imprint design) in the same size but I went with white grout not to bring out the irregular grout lines too much. I feel it gives texture but not over the top! the pic u posted looks badly laid and they are different size tiles. There is great textured tile at Amber tile or colour tile (I'm in Sydney) otherwise I think like your husband suggests and go with the standard subway (but change grout to black for that industrial feel) otherwise how do you feel about a beveled subway? That would of been my next choice!

Thank you @Creative Style Interior Design and @bigreader @Creativelychallenged - Thank you for your nice words. We are indeed very happy with the result. We also went through all these stages you describe, so don't feel depressed... there might be light at the end of the tunnel. Our research stage was so long and quite discouraging at times. We've always wanted to live in a queenslander, but our house is not one. This didn't stop us on going ahead adding some character to our bathrooms design (and kitchen). We started with the idea of making these bathrooms with a colonial touch but we found that it was not easy to find the elements we wanted (tiles, furniture, tapware) at a cost that would fit our budget. We learned that the type of tiles we liked (encaustic) were VERY expensive ($200+), traditional looking furniture was also very expensive... So we shifted to a more modern design...(not very happily though), and after a while of collecting ideas for modern tiles, furniture etc.. we felt quite depressed because we were compromising... updating our bathrooms with something fresher, but far, far away from what we really liked. In our view modern furniture looked very plain, streamlined and... boring, but we were doing 2 bathrooms (on a budget) so we were not prepared to spend a fortune, and we settled with modern. We ordered marble type tiles for the floor 900x600, and wood like tiles for the walls, and booked the builder to start demolition. Luckily for us National tiles called us saying that there was an error and the tiles they promised were not going to be available for 3 more months!!! Depressed again.... It took us so long to find something we liked (kinda) and now we were back to square one. Then my lovely wife said... Why don't we give it another go and try to make a more traditional design as we originally wanted.... So to make it short... we went back online with 'refreshed' energy and pressure (demolition already started) and found many things I coudn't find before: Floor tiles @ $25/m2 Subway tiles for walls @$16 the box on sale... Ensuite furniture and basin from Ikea Main bathroom furniture was an antique dresser we found in an op shop for $150 repainted and repurposed.... etc... In the end we spent approx $12,5K for both bathrooms in total :-) So, to summarise... don't dispair... just look in this website, on pinterest, magazines, google, etc... Play around with ideas and copy!... (you'll see that our ensuite is quite similar to the first photo in this discussion)... Good luck! :-)

Hi Tash, I would stick with the white paint. You have noted you want timber, marble, grey, white and brass in the space and I feel that if you now add a colour to the walls that doesn't blend with the tiles that sit on the same wall there will be too many finishes in the space. Quite a few manufacturers have tiles similar to the one in your image so I'd check with your local supplier. If you do go with the subway tiles perhaps look for a handmade style tile and lay them as a herringbone style with white grout to get the same textural look you are after. Good luck! Regards, Kathryn.