My personal preference is for seamless hardwood throughout (except bathrooms), but it is just that--a personal preference. Many people prefer tile in their kitchen and hardwood floors through the rest of the house, or some other combination of floorings. Even though it seems like there are so many photographs on Houzz of seamless floors throughout, remember than whenever you are seeing a kitchen with a tile floor the chances are good that the rest of the house is not that same tile. So even though you aren't seeing the seams in the photos, many have them.

Well, there are basically 2 ways: Straight and diagonally. This is assuming all floor tiles are the same size and square, of course. If you have a rectangle, then you already have more choice - horizontally or vertically. There are some mix and match sold as sets or created by the person buying them that make the options virtually endless. Heck, you could have chevron floors. You can make a tile "rug" in an area. You can make stripes with a different contrasting tile. You could lay them like parquet floors. You can add little glass tiles in the corners. If you are working with rectangles and/or mixed shapes, the sky is the limit.

Ah ok! Thank you kind people I guess the vote goes to tile then. I haven't started but will overlay over the existing tiles. And yes I was referring to walls. I was shown lovely pictures of bathrooms that had painted walls but was adviced against it as a) my bathroom is pretty small and b) those picts were probably of powder rooms. Thanks again

You already have your accent colour as your sofa pillows (log roll pillows). I would take one of them shopping with me to get a rug that has that colour in it. It doesn't need to be a lot of that colour (I love the idea of burgandy rug here...but it might be too much with your monotone scheme). You can find a large rug that incorporates that red/raspberry in it so that you have a colour that is now your accent.