Bathroom tile design ideas and the paradox of choice

Hi, Reader. We're in the final stages of designing our master bathroom and I've come down with a bad case of decision fatigue.

Maybe you're a regular visitor to this site who's been following our home renovation from the beginning. Perhaps you're embarking on a bathroom remodel yourself and entered the keywords "bathroom design ideas" into Google. Most likely you are my mom, or my husband's mom (Hi, Moms!). Regardless of who you are or how you got here, I'd appreciate your input.

Here's what our master bathroom looks like right now:

We need to order the remaining materials for the bathroom ASAP so we don't hold up the contractors who are building our addition. Here are a few design ideas my husband mocked up:

Pay no attention to the color of the wall above the tile, we can figure that out later, and it's easy enough to change. We will definitely have a clawfoot tub and penny round floor tiles. We thought adding horizontal planks to the west wall could add some visual interest, but perhaps it makes the room look too busy? The horizontal planks are already present in other rooms throughout the house, so for the sake of cohesion --and because we like the look -- we intend to add them to certain walls in the addition.

A few more options:

Whether we tile that whole back wall, or only 3/4ths (as in option 1 and 2) we intend to randomly include some off white salvaged tiles among the white subway tiles, as you can see in these illustrations. I'm on the fence about #4. It could look dated and tacky (e.g. 80s), or retro and cool (e.g. 50s) (I'm generalizing, obviously). If done right, black and white can look timeless, but these stripes might be too... fixed.

Here's a mock-up of the bathroom viewed from the bedroom. In black:


And white:

We're planning to build the sliding barn doors out of the salvaged board and batten siding that was removed from the part of the house we're adding onto. Mimicking the exterior of the house could look pretty cool, and recycling is always cool.

I'd intended to write about decision overload and the paradox of choice, but it's getting late. In short: I now understand why people put off repainting their living room because they can't decide between the 80 different shades of white. Eggshell, Linen, Bone, China, Soft Chamois, so on and so forth. Psychologically, freedom of choice is a very interesting topic.

Speaking of choice: Between #1-4, which is your favorite and why?

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