Every wall in this Carmel Valley bathroom is tiled from the floor to the ceiling — not just the shower, and not just to a wainscot line.
Tiling the whole room, floor to ceiling
Most bathrooms tile the wet area and paint the rest. Carrying tile across all four walls to the ceiling is a different decision and it changes the room in two specific ways.
First, it removes every horizontal break. A tile wall that stops partway up draws a line across the room at that height, and the eye reads the space as shorter than it is. Running to the ceiling gives the eye nothing to stop at.
Second, it removes paint from a room that is repeatedly steamed. Bathroom paint is the finish that ages worst — it marks near the shower, it picks up moisture at the ceiling line, and it wants redoing long before anything else in the room does.
Why it takes more planning
Full-height tile is unforgiving of layout mistakes. On a partly tiled wall, an awkward cut can be hidden low or behind a fixture. Running the full height means every wall has to be set out in advance so the courses land sensibly at the ceiling and the corners align where two walls meet.
Outlets, switches, the mirror and the vanity all have to be located against that layout before the first tile is set, because every one of them is a cut in the field.
A prefabricated vanity, deliberately
The vanity here is prefabricated rather than built. In a room where the tile is doing all of the work, a stock vanity that fits the opening properly is the right call — the walls are the feature, and the vanity's job is to sit quietly against them.
Custom cabinetry earns its place where the room is awkward or where the cabinetry is the focal point. Neither applied here, and pretending otherwise would have added time to a project that did not need it.
The shower
Rebuilt in place. Out to the studs, new waterproofing, new pan, and tile carried up to meet the rest of the room so the shower does not read as a separate box inside the bathroom.
The result
A bathroom that reads as one continuous surface from floor to ceiling, finished in four weeks.
