design idea - subway tile in the kitchen

Good golly.  This is just the thing we've been talking about: subway tile in the kitchen: either as a backsplash or to do the walls completely.  And now here today is a feature on Apt Therapy about that very thing. Exciting.  Take a look at the pix.

And here's another post with pix of subway tiled kitchens from The Fat Hydrangea. 

Now, the thing that none of the pix in either of these posts shows is white subway tiled kitchen walls with a contrasting dark grout.  There is nothing nastier than dirty grout and there seems to be no way at all to clean the stuff once it is determined to be filthy, so why not start with a darker color and avoid the issue altogether? Hygiene smygiene!! We're going to clean the walls the same regardless of color, so we might as well not advertise that they are permanently stained with a light colored grout.
Here we go (click the pix to enlarge):

This first one which is nearly perfect is from kitchenbacksplashes.blogspot.com:

And another from curbly.com - though not as dark a grout: 

Another good one from an Apt Therapy post:

And this one is from HERE but it isn't really traditional subway tile:

Oh, hey, here are some good pix from Pink Wallpaper:

The real problem though is this: How do we install wide tiles on a curved wall? The tiles don't curve so the ends of the tiles will be right up against the wall while the middle part of each tile will stick out from the wall as an arc between the two end-points.  Then, since you have to stagger the rows, the center of each tile will protrude a little over the seam between the two tiles above and below it.  I suppose that with a large enough radius curve and 8" wide tiles it might not be so pronounced.  Anyway, maybe we just test it out with a few tiles before we buy cases of them.