When I renovated my kitchen , I thought choosing cabinets and making other decisions would be much harder than it turned out to be.

The best advice I got was from my brother, who told me to get a few magazines that show kitchen remodels. Home Depot and Lowe's sells them, and probably anyplace with a wide variety of magazines would also have them. The same magazines had articles on bathroom remodels, too. There were lots of pictures. They helped me make some basic style decisions.

BTW Google Images is another good way to look at pictures of different styles so you can get ideas and decide what you do and don't like. For example, google "bathroom white subway tile" and you'll find various pics. I recently wanted to see how brown curtains would look in my niece's lime-green bedroom, so I searched for something like "lime green walls with brown" and found some good pictures.

Another good source of ideas was the websites for the different contractors I got estimates from. They have lots of photos of work they have done. And listings for houses that are for sale also have photos that will show you the full range of gorgeous and tasteful to dated and what-were-they-thinking.

I decided I wanted white cabinets, blue walls, a gray floor, and in general cool tones rather than warm ones (e.g., silver gray rather than warm gray). Thanks to the magazine photos I decided I wanted white subway tiles for the backsplash. Unfortunately the white tiles sold by Home Depot and Lowe's had a warm beige-ness to them (they didn't look right next to the samples I had for the cabinet, paint and floor colors), so I had to keep looking.

I visited a flooring store (to investigate the Marmoleum I wanted for my floor) and discovered that they also carried tiles for walls. I found a tile that would work, jotted down the manufacturer name and other info, found the manufacturer's website and used it to find other dealers in my area so I could shop around for the best price. Through this process I found a couple of places that sold nothing but tiles. I got lots of information and ideas looking at their product displays and talking to their salespeople. It took a couple of afternoons to visit a bunch of stores to get price estimates, but it was actually kind of fun and it gave me a chance to explore parts of my area that I hadn't been to before. Most of the stores gave me a free sample tile to bring home. I used painters tape to label the back of each tile to keep track of where I got it, what it was (manufacturer and color name) and price.

Part of the tile decision is choosing a color for the grout, too. There are only a few companies (Mapei being one of them -- a familiar name from an old cycling team). I was able to get sample cards from the tile stores showing the various colors available, so I was able to set everything out at home -- tile sample next to grout color next to paint chip next to cabinet sample next to floor sample -- to make sure everything worked together.

I went with a silver gray grout, which contrasts with the white tiles just enough to bring out the subway tile pattern.

When I renovate my bathroom, I'm thinking of also doing a white subway tile there, but using larger tiles with white grout. It's a small room and a larger area will be covered by tiles than in the kitchen, and I think this will work better than the 3x6 tile with contrasting grout in the kitchen.