Can we deviate from the 'bathroom uniform' that seems to have been imposed?

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There seems to have been a rule passed by the Bathroom Police that all bathrooms have to look essentially the same now. You know, big beige tiles over the floor and walls, not a scrap of wall left untiled, enormous showers, very 'hotel' finish. I don't dislike this, but am concerned it will date the bathroom and I don't want my room to look like every other bathroom. We are thinking of 5 years before selling. Any advice?

What I hate about those freestanding baths is that there doesn't appear to be a ledge on the side. So for someone who needs to keep their glasses on until they get in the bath, where do you put your glasses? Please don't tell me you have to put a small table next to the bath!

fruitloops you will be cursing those shower cubicle mosaic tiles (and your DH) in a a couple of years time. They are an absolute bastard to clean: so much grout!

Meh, I like hotel bathrooms. I'm having a Carrara marble wall, white painted walls, a few plants and a freestanding bath in mine. All very calm. Husband has opted for a glass ceiling and huge shower head in his! Everyone likes something different, there's no right or wrong.

This is after scrubbing, steam cleaning, applying GrotBuster type stuff - you name it!

My parents have a lovely bathroom. The suite is dated now but the rest is lovely. It has a lovely warm wooden floor and wooden sides to the bath and a warm peachy colour to the walls. Sounds foul but is warm and welcoming and completely removed from bathrooms having to be like hotels or seaside themed.

Ours is victorian public loo style with dark green tiles around bath and basin and lighter paint elsewhere. I do like it, previous owners did it.

MIL has just built a house and all her bathrooms (3 of the bloody things) are big beige tiles and no hint of character.Actually none of the house has any character, so boring it makes me want to cry

margot have you tried a paste made with bicarb and neat bleach? - read it on a thread on here (was for silicone seal) and it did an amazing job...Just brush it on with an old toothbrush and leave a few hours...
Arty - I thought I hated coloured grout ...but a few years ago having my kitchen fitted and being a ditherer (not wanting tiles (grout!), looking at stainless steel, glass, perspex etc etc ) I ended up having to get tiles for the splashback the day before it was to be fitted and they couldn't be too big (too many sockets!) etc, etc. I went to every tile shop I could find -ended up coming home with a car full of 3 different types of tile ... none of which I particularly liked.... I decided to go for the cheapest plain pale grey 12cm tile -thinking at least it is cheap for the short term. With white grout they would have looked awful but the fitter suggested black grout...and I really really like them...(And it cost £25 for the lot - rather than than the £3-400 I'd budgeted for!)

(I do have a stainless steel splashback behind the hob though...the idea of grout behind a hob....nooooooo.....)

Margot I have your tiles, circa 2005. HG mold spray is your friend, though it's not so good for silicone, so am now going to try unlucky's bicarbonate and bleach. The excitement of my life.

Thank you for the suggestions. I've tried bicarb and bleach but it didn't make much difference. Steam cleaning with a hand held applicance was good (v concentrated jet of steam) but my God, can you imagine how tedious it was going round all that grout. I was losing the will to live. Never again would I have mosaic in a shower cubicle.

Rhonda you get a bath caddy!

I have travertine tiles - and any bathroom that tries to look 'like a luxury boutique hotel' - but I inherited a hideous bathroom that combined travertine, lots of orange varnished wood, blue bubble tiles and dirty peach paintwork. Much has been remedied, but the travertine still hangs around to haunt me - I'll get it one day.

My ideal bathroom would have a big window, no spotlights (I hate them), old fashioned taps (by which I mean, nothing gimmicky, not mock-Victorian), a toilet with a flush handle, no pop-up plugs. I want either a white or a retro coloured suite, white tiles, and lots of painted walls where I could ring the changes. A bathroom like that can change personality every couple of years, it's much more of a blank canvas.

I'm not a fan of roll-top baths, either. I know this is an unpopular view. I just look at them and think of the spiders hiding round the back...

Fruitloops please post a pic of this kitchen of yours! Sounds amazing. I feel suddenly I must too have an orange oven

Well, we certainly won't be having a rolltop bath. The adults in our house haven't had a bath in 20 years so it really is only a kiddy washing facility. We have a vaguely deco-ish vibe going in the rest of the house so we would probably start from that. I have read threads on what to use as flooring and there appears to be no perfect answer. We also have very little money so we really are talking basic suite or basic slightly plus. Mostly I want rid of the horrid etched shower doors .

I've read this whole thread and there's no conclusion! I am in this predicament but with no light and need to pick my colour scheme promto. What do I go for? I seem unable to make a decision. My sanitaryware is Burlington, but it's not a period home.

We had our bathroom done 4 yrs ago. I can't stand tiles everywhere so we had a plain white suite, large white tiles behind the bath and sink with a border of black, grey and cream slate slices, dark slate effect tiles on floor and the rest painted walls.

Originally we painted the walls a strong sage green but they've just been reprinted a turquoise shade to brighten it up. The great thing is that the white tiles, grey floor etc go with most colours so it's easy to change.

I would def avoid all over tiling and tiling in a trendy colour - it was biege but now grey is very in but will really date the room IMO.

oooh, I love my bathroom and did it exactly how I wanted. I have warm cream tiles on the floor and going up the walls half way. I have some 'interesting' large mosaic tiles in browns, blues, hot pinks, greens, golds (I LOVE them!) in various places. I have walls and ceilings in a kind of dark apricot (it's a big bathroom, didn't want a white ceiling).

I love my bathroom!

We did ours a couple of years ago - white sanitaryware, a high wall cistern, sink with a chrome stand, green subway tiles, dark green Lino. We love it. It will definitely date (the subway tiles if not the colour) but it's quirky, suits the period of the house, and it's easy to clean.

Unlucky
Yes, black grout is brilliant! I've found that white grout (apart from becoming dirty so quickly) drains colour from the tiles. Whereas black or any other dark coloured grout has a 'stained glass' type of effect, in that rather than draining the colour, it 'frames' each tile, giving a stained glass window type effect.
I use swimming pool strength grout, and yes, it is - as I was once quite seriously asked - waterproof!

We're putting a high level cistern loo in our first floor cloakroom to replace the horrid 1990s (?) one that barely manages to flush - high level cisterns are so much better!

For our last house we found an amazing gothic style high level loo that, whilst a reproduction, was no longer being manufactured - apparently according to a friend that has a showroom they stopped making them due to production costs - and we were really pissed disappointed that we had to leave it behind when we sold that house last year.

Scouring fleabay recently I couldn't believe my luck when I found the self-same design of loo on a really good buy-it-now price and snapped it up - brand new, I hasten to add! We'll add a 'throne' seat - always wanted one and as we're not planning on moving I don't mind the £££ - and I've seen some gothic panelling for the walks that would look stunning painted a wacky colour.

We also had mosaics in the shower cubicle at our last house - dark brown glass - and we used matching dark brown grout......no cleaning issues there!

walls not walks....bloody autocorrect!

I also absolutely hate the beige hotel bathrooms. Hated them even when they belonged in hotels only. However moved into a house that doesn't have one, but two of them! I have to live with them for now but when we re-do them planning to have one with cast iron bath and tongue and groove (Victorian, or what someone called East London bathroom?). I had one like that before and I think it ages well, this look has become fairly classic, obviously might look a bit out of place in a new build! The other one i actually would like the black and white bathroom (or even better, cream and black with black grout) but not the bland version :).
I don't get the hate for white metro tiles, they are actually a lot more classic than fashionable. And about them dating, what? more than any other white tiles? More than coloured tiles?
Not surprisingly i love the Paris/NYC public loos or metro station style!
Nice mix of bathrooms here though, seems like everyone is doing their own thing which is great. (Just had the builders telling me "but people don't do this" about my new kitchen yesterday and found it super annoying. Do we really need to all have the same kitchen??).

Yep, I think white metro tiles are an absolute classic and I refuse to go off them just because they're ubiquitous. I think of them in the same category as wooden floors, or a white bathroom suite. They look good within a wide range of styles, so don't stop you making changes - unlike travertine, which ties you in to one look.

And I agree that this thread is cheering because of all the different opinions. That's what the OP was saying, surely? Not that there's anything wrong with the travertine look, just that it's depressing when everyone does the same thing.

I was the one being grumpy about metro tiles. Yes I agree, they can look great, depending on other fittings and in the right property.

But just now they seem to be everywhere (sometimes looking quite cheap also) and it's a bit off putting.

noddy - pls come back back with more ideas about being ahead of the bathroom curve/timeless