Mosaic Murals

• One of the most interesting things you can do with shower walls is to create an encompassing mural of mosaic tiles. Mosaics as small as half an inch across, generally in ceramic or colored glass, come affixed to mesh sheets which you hang on the walls all at once. By cutting the mesh between the tiles, you can create whatever shapes you want out of groups of tiles and intersperse them with other color groups to make patterns and shapes. For example, consider a forest motif, with dark vertical tree trunks backed by varying shades of green and yellow to represent leaves; or a checkerboard design with shapes and images within the squares of the checkerboard, mimicking a quilt.
  
  

Mixing Materials

• Tiles come in many materials, including ceramic, glass, marble, slate and brick. You aren't restricted to just one style. Interspersing different materials of the same color gives a subtle depth to the walls. Or stress the differences as much as possible by doing the main background in, say, blue ceramic, running a green marble border through it. For a contrast between modern and rustic, hang sleek colored-glass tiles on the upper and lower spans of the wall with a wide strip of rough, coarse, gray stone through the middle. (You'll want to seal the stone in a flat matte sealant to prevent it from absorbing water.)
  
  

Mixing Sizes

• A wide range of tile sizes can be combined in various ways to avoid too repetitive a design. Choose some combination of ceramic tiles--say, tiny mosaics, 2-foot-wide squares and mid-sized rectangles--and lay them out to appear random. They can't actually be random, however; you'll have to carefully measure as you lay out the walls to make sure the differing sizes interlock correctly so you don't have unexpected spaces in the design.