I would tile the whole bathroom, or just tile the tub area.

You could do the whole bathroom up to the chair rail and the tub surround up to the ceiling.

Thank you for the comments.

We are not big fans of tile wainscoting and I think we would prefer to avoid going in that direction.

I have voted for tiling the entire room, but my wife prefers the idea of leaving a few walls untiled to make it easier for hanging art or other wall decorations.

Our designer suggested what you see above, but I worry about the asymmetry.

Another vote for whole bathroom or just three tub walls.

I would do the three walls around the tub, then the three walls around the sink.

We had somewhat the same situation. Although we do have a fully tiled open shower, we have mostly untiled walls, some wainscoting by the tub, and some tile as a backsplash. We thought about having more wall tile, but decided that there is a point where it gets to be too much. I agree with the other commenters here that what you have outlined above in your drawing is too much. I'm glad we stopped where we did. I'm not a big fan of wainscoting, but I do like how ours turned out. Our tile installer could have made a lot more money with all the tiling we were considering, but he counseled moderation.

I agree with errant. What s/he says makes perfect sense.

Thank you all for your input.

Kudzu9 - beautiful bathroom. May I ask, how did you finish or deal with the exposed edges of your tile (for both the wainscoting and the outside corners around the windows)?

Mike-

The tile contractor was a perfectionist, and used a grinder with successively finer grits to polish the edges until he got to 6000 grit. The resulting edges are so smooth that they feel glazed. It looks much better than the standard use of metal or plastic finishing strips. We did not have through-body color with the tiles, but the result was close enough that it doesn't matter. He did the same with a powder room we had tiled last year and it worked well there; I'll post a closeup shot later today.

Great-looking bathroom! May I ask you to tell us about the gray wall tile? How large? Is it porcelain? I do not see any grout lines on my screen…looks super!

ekscrunchy-

We used several sizes: the stuff on the floor is 24'X24"; in the shower, we used 12"X12" and 12"X18"; and the wainscoting was 12"X24"; it's a little less than 1/2" thick. It's rectified porcelain and was quite flat, but I always think it's best to minimize any chance for lippage with large tiles by using a straight stacking pattern rather than an offset or brick pattern. The grout lines are 1/16". Here's a close-up of one corner where the tile edges were polished:

The overall appearance is actually very uniform in color to the eye, but the light reflections do weird things when one is taking a picture: those two pieces of tile at the corner are the same color, and look like this:

I think your original depiction is perfect. Having had experience with this, there is no reason to tile the third wall.

Thank you Voila. Could you elaborate on your experience? Any photos of the finished product?

@kudzu9 thank you for sharing a photo of your bathroom and the tile layout. I was also curious about (1) your backsplash and how the medicine cabinet sits partly on the tile and partly on the wall. How do you do that? (2) Which brand of stainable doors did you get? I am considering stainable doors for bedroom entry but don't see many available (NJ).

Sumod-

The medicine cabinets are simple wood frames with a cabinet-grade plywood back that just sit in the stud cavity. Because of the dimensions, the front of the frame projects about 1"+ beyond the finished wall. The medicine cabinet doors are also plywood with veneered edges and they are attached to the frame with standard cabinet hinges (Euro hinges). The mirrors are just 1/4" plate glass ordered to size from a glass shop and held in place with mirror mastic and a metal strip at the bottom that you don't really see. The guy who did the cabinets just made the medicine cabinets as part of the job.

I don't know about the door brand...we live in a large metro area that has lots of door shops and the doors are just solid core maple doors with the center cut out and a maple panel held in with molding. They're not stained; they simply have a couple coats of clear spray lacquer.

@kudzu9 Thank you! I'll find out from my cabinet maker he can get me a medicine cabinet made. They look wonderful! Alas, stainable doors seem to be a long way away (16 weeks at best).