use something to chip the white paint off and deal with it.
you should ask the landlord what they'll allow.
apartments suck bad no matter what. at least in my experience.

It would be a very smart investment for the landlord to have this tile redone. Maybe s/he would split the cost with you? If you'll be there a while, it might be worth it. If that's not an option, and if the room is well ventilated and you're a fairly neat/clean person, you could starch fabric over the wall tiles and hang a curtain to conceal the shower tiles. Fabric adhered with starch removes easily and cleans off with hot water. If it was all pink or all green, you could decorate to work with it, but this combo is really tricky!

ohhhh that is bad. I've got nothing.

Shower with the light off.

I think the time for bargaining with the landlord was before you signed the lease, so don't expect much from that. As has been said so many times before, the best you can do is embrace it and decorate around it. Frankly I'd hang a pink shower curtain from hospital rails on the ceiling, surrounding the shower, to match the pink accent tile. That hides half your problem but coordinates with the other half along the wall by the toilet.

I used contact paper in my rental bathroom, to hide really ugly beige trim tiles. Of course this can't be done in the actual shower or anywhere that gets sufficiently wet, but I've had mine up for months now and had no peeling due to humidity or moisture. It may be a pain to cut out all the tile shapes, but it's super cheap, I paid $30 for a roll and have a ton left over.

I would NOT be happy, as a landlord, to discover my bathroom tiles covered in contact paper.

I second the "chip the rest off" comment. Here's a link to removing tile paint that might help: http://www.hgtv.com/home-improvement/tile-vanity-paint-removal/index.html

Other than, I say embrace the kitsch. From my experience in Tejas, not so many landlords welcome the idea of you re-tiling their bathrooms, (my last landlady wouldn't let me repaint the walls, even though I was just going to paint them the same color of white - they needed a touch-up).

I'd look for vintage hand towels embroidered in pinks and greens and play up the outdated quirkiness of it. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!

I'd clean up the tiles/ remove the old paint and accessorize w/ items that will play up a fun Resort/Palm Beach/Tommy Bahama vibe: Framed Travel Posters, Towels w/ embroidered palm trees, etc.

http://www.tommybahama.com/TBG/Home/Bath_Collections.jsp

It's mostly the pink ones that are sending this into the direction of a Miami Vice set... I would perhaps try tile tattoos with an opaque background - white or black. Maybe order a small amount and see if they'll stay on the rounded edge pieces or not. I've never used them myself. Truth be told, I actually would consider carefully removing the pink tiles and replacing them with black, but that's just me...

http://www.2jane.com/category/products/tile-tattoos

OR - just thought of this - you could put in some serious wood molding over the tiles and attached to the wall above (and lightly caulked around the floor.) Put a thin wood backing onto the molding so that it sticks out enough to go past the tile thickness. You could even make it really thick and give yourself a mini shelf all the way around the bathroom. Might leave the inside of the shower alone, but this could cover most of it - even the corner could be hidden this way.

Yikes! That looks like a bathroom at the Southfork Ranch. I say go with it, I mean you're in Dallas now right? Time to pump up the hair with some Aqua Net and grab your best pair of shoulder pads.

hmmm... break your lease? hehe

"break your lease?"

Indeed - There's some fodder for great discussions for the AT Bloggers:

"Why did you lease an apartment you hate?"
"Why did you rent a place from an unreasonable landlord?"

Really, the color is growing on me a bit... the tiles that bother me are the ones the last people tried to paint and are white with pitted teal spots... ick... I may just go pink all around but I like the miami vice idea!! Love the rest of the house and all of its quirks (and there are quite a few) but the bathroom just puzzles me.. It is the width of an airplane bathroom which adds to the "special qualities" of this room

Amy (original poster)

Huh, that's an interesting color scheme! Since you can't really change the tile, you might want to work with it. I'm feeling something very Hollywood Regency-- shiny gold and mirrors and bling. Good luck!

I agree with removing the white tile paint, since it's chipping already. And since you can't get rid of it, go ahead and embrace it, Miami Vice. I think it can be a lot of fun if you, even if it's not exactly your taste.

If you know how to tile, or know someone who does, you could offer to have install it if the landlord is willing to pay for retiling.

I'd suggest looking for a fabric with several colors (including the color of the tiles) and then pick one of the other colors to use on the walls and accessories. You could use the fabric for a window valance/curtain or shower curtain.

Another idea is to use a light to medium grey on the walls and pick either the pink or green for accessories.

A friend of mine rents an apartment with a bathroom that has attained legendary cult status - we all call it The Seventies Porno Bathroom, complete with baby blue tile, faux wood paneling, gaudy mirror, the works. Any attempts to hide its awesome hideousness (or hideous awesomeness, whichever) would fail horribly, so everything's left as it is, in an otherwise nicely decorated apartment. Everyone loves it.

When your apartment has such a hideous elephant in the room, it seems like there's no other choice but to embrace it. I agree with everyone that says to go all Miami Vice, but take it to the extreme - tray of tacky '80s drugstore perfumes/colognes [brought out for guests during house parties], or for the ultimate in camp, a wall of Don Johnson & Jon Oates 8x10s in gilded frames.

If this were my tile, there's no way I would play up that color scheme! Instead, I'd add as many colors to the room as I can in the hopes that it would take the attention off the tile! (Although I can't even think what colors you could add that wouldn't clash with pink and teal...maybe yellows?)

Maybe try finding a huge lighting fixture, brightly colored hand towels, or a massive art cluster, whatever draws the attention away!

"Instead, I'd add as many colors to the room as I can in the hopes that it would take the attention off the tile!"

As has been posted here on AT a great many times - the more you try to ignore an unpleasant feature of a room by pretending it isn't there, the more it stands out like a sore thumb...
...but when you embrace that feature/color and include it as a part of your palette, that feature recedes into the background and your room becomes a cohesive whole.

Here is a post from Saucy Dwelling from a lady with a pastel pink and blue bathroom tiles and her solution to the problem. I think she found a great way to work with what she had, perhaps it can give you some ideas even if you don't go for this particular style :o)

http://community.livejournal.com/saucydwellings/1301895.html

Ps. If you do find a solution that works for everything but the shower itself (dues to the water), then you can hang a rod in front of the shower doors with a shower curtain/regular curtain that matches the solution and hides the shower :o)

I like the idea of just embracing the kitsch. Maybe get a poster like this framed (ideally with colors that match a bit better). http://images.art.com/images/products/regular/10309000/10309892.jpg

There is a company called Smart Tiles. They have a line for bathrooms that are moisture/water friendly. Super easy to install as they are peel and stick. Hope this helps. I know how hard it is to move in somewhere, and have it not be yours to do with what you want. I have used these in many of my places.

Good luck!

Kim

I would go Hollywood Regency all the way. Baroque mirror, striped towels, a pop of red.

Just go with it. If anyone asks you were inspired by D. Draper.
Best Wishes
Beck

I agree with two previous posters. The first said, get rid of the pink, work with what remains. The second said check out Smart Tiles. (I just did, goggled them & checked out their offerings). If I were you, I would get some smart tiles, in a complementary green, and put them over the pink. You would then have something nice to live with.

I would paint the pink. It's a small area so it wouldn't cost you much. You can by the paint for high humidity areas in any hardware stores. I painted my shower tiles a year ago; still looking great.

i read an article a while ago where the renters covered the bad tile with white bead board that was somehow waterproof. When they moved out they just removed it and filled in the drilled holes. I can't remember where i saw it but worth looking into...

I love it, pink flamingoes, a retro motel vacancy sign, alligator alley memories, the palms,

Thanks so much all!! I am now torn between the Miami Vice Theme and the pink flamingos!! I will let you know how it turns out!

Embrace it. I once lived in an apartment that the landlord had recently papered with black and white hideously faux Toulouse Lautrec "pattern" of men in tux's and paired with plump naked women. He wouldn't allow me to remove it so I painted the walls whorehouse red, all the trim black and got the reddest, fluffiest rug and toilet seat cover. It was hilarious and cheered me enormously. If it's bad and you have to live with it, go to town and make it fun.

Research miraclemethod.com. They can come in and paint your tiles white or any color you like. The finish is hard - as though the paint is baked on. Works really well. You just have to use soft scrub when cleaning.

I had a slightly bigger bathroom than yours, but what I did might work for you. The bathroom I had was completely the porn bathroom mentioned above; baby blue tiles, bordered in pink with a nasty grey rug with a nasty grey toilet. I hated using that bathroom. So I I bought sheets of the plastic plexiglass sheets from home depot. Measured my walls and divided the sheets into evenly sized rectangles and then using wall decals from ebay, I decorated the plastic leaving some with no decals at all. I then sealed in the decals with some good acrylic paint and then screwed the new "tiles" into the grout. That was just for the shower stall. I used salvaged faux wood vinyl from a new home and pasted it over the rest of the wall tiles (which only reached half way up the wall) and proceeded to rip out the damn rug. I discover that the floor underneath was cement, so I painted the cement over with a high gloss paint and called the whole bathroom modern. Actually it wasn't a great result, took me a lot of time, but it was better than the atrocity before. When I left the apartment, I unscrewed my plexiglass solution, the vinyl walls, and laid the carpet over my white floors; I re-grouted the shower stall.
My decorating idea wasn't a fix, I was kind of disappointed with the result, took me a good month to finish, but it was an interesting two years to use.
I'm just sharing some of my experiences and perhaps you might get an inspiration for some solution that some other poor renter in the future might use.

Sorry did not see this when it was orginally posted. In case you still need help, I had this problem and was able to solve it in the following way. The reason the paint is chipping is because the tile is doing what it's made to do, repel things and stay clean. I bought paper towels at a home store, the heavy duty kind. I would soak them in water and then paper a small sectin of the tile with them. Oddly enough one brand stuck really easily and would stay there for a period of time and one , not so much. The paint would soak up the moisture and become pretty easy to scrap off. The moisture in the bathroom is the reason the paint isn't sticking. No chemicals, some work and some time and now all the strange olive green paint is gone and I have clean white tile, with a few pinks thrown in. Not the best, but way better!

I almost bought these tile tattoos for the kitchen in my rental once. I still haven't done anything to fix them (aside from going along decor-wise with the kitschy theme of it all as cute as I know how), but I do still like the idea of these tile tattoos. Love the retro ones in particular...
http://www.2jane.com/category/products/tile-tattoos

I'm curious for solutions too. My bathroom tile is equally heinous.

I painted over mine. Tools needed:
Mini 4 inch foam roller
Primer( Bulls Eye 1,2,3 works best-$19 at home Depot)
Paint on a solid coat of the primer
Top coat with a semi gloss( I went with Sherwin Williams in a Mocha)

It has held up GREAT and you cant tell it has been painted, I even did accent paint on random tiles