Laundry Nook

We are living in the basement of our house, while we have a lovely tenant pay most of the mortgage upstairs... (winky face). While it is so nice paying a fraction of the mortgage it makes space limited. The flow of the basement was horrific, we had the bathtub jutting into the kitchen, the only way to enter the bathroom was to go through the kitchen. There was no room in the kitchen for a table because the kitchen was also the laundry room, and the washer, dryer, enormous fridge and stove took up all the room. In our remodeling, we used wasted space underneath the stairs as a laundry nook. As the kitchen is (finally) wrapping up I really want to tile the laundry nook. I had envisioned subway till g with big 6X8 tiles. I found them for $1.08 a sq/ft. And I thought that was the set price... Nope that was a sell price... Eff! We did see that 3X3 square tiles are around a dollar a sq/ft. Not as lovely as my dream. I don't like the look of these square tiles in a grid pattern, that's a little 1960's for me.... We are trying to find different patterns to lay the tile. I really like the staggered subway, I think I would want it even more staggered so they appeared more like shingles... Diamond would be neat and a little different.

Vertical subway would draw the eye upwards maybe making the nook appear a little bigger. I stumbled upon the pattern below that I have never seen before. Imagine it twisted 45 degrees so that the mix of square and subway make a chevron pattern.... I think I might be in love....

So many options, I really want to use the average material in a new way... Opinions?