Wallpaper Selection - Not What I Expected to be Doing

I am continuing the basement renovation saga with this blog.  It is going fast (could be mostly completed in another three weeks) so we have to start making decisions quickly.  One decision I did not anticipate making was a selection of wallpaper for the bathroom.

Basement Bathroom 

When we bought this house in 2000, wallpaper was very popular and the Atlanta area had a number of large stores mostly devoted to making in-store selections.  My husband wallpapered all five and a half bathrooms in the house as well as most of the kitchen.  I loved this look for about five years and started noticing the decline of wallpaper in decorating magazines and home shows.  I also noticed that the stored in the area were closing and today, I do not believe there is a single store still available devoted to wallpaper selections.  So, I looked forward to the day that I could rip out that (now) old wallpaper and paint the walls (never did care for the heavy faux finishes).  We redid our son's bathroom some time ago and eliminated the paper in that room but all the others remain intact.

The basement renovation was an opportunity to remove the wallpaper to give the walls a clean paint surface.  I was planning to paint it the same color as the surrounding area - warm taupe-gold.  And then, something happened!  I started noticing some of the GREAT wallpapers being used in show houses and decorating magazines.  It seemed like a whole, clean new look and much more interesting than plain paint.

I visited our local Sherwin-Williams store's wallpaper corner section and took note of some of the interesting papers that are available.  I waited until we selected the counter top (granite) and flooring (marble-looking white with hints of charcoal and pale gold) and cabinet color (charcoal) before returning to the store to look for options to present to my husband.

Yesterday, I brought home four books with about 18-20 choices - ranging from mostly taupe-gold patterns to bolder patterns with some charcoal black.  I did not want a hard black so many of the otherwise wonderful black and white images didn't work.

Some of the predominantly taupe/gold options - I liked them all! 

I liked this pale gold with grey highlights a log (stick shows color paint being used in adjacent space).

Final choice - swirls of charcoal with some taupe-gold accents.  The granite is not solid black, it has some greys and whites as accents.   

We are getting measurements to place the order as we speak.  So, the only things left to select in the bathroom are the light fixtures and new glass shower stall.  I call that progress!