help

We're refacing our fireplace. I'm not a fan of the red brick. Actually, I don't mind it usually, but in our case how our surround is positioned, our bricks look more like stripes of mortar.

So we're tiling over it. Tile-ing? Tiling looks funny.
Anyway, you know me and my indecisiveness. We're having trouble deciding what to do.
Here's a little background info...
Originally we didn't want to have to do anything with the mantle/surround. I don't love the color, but I didn't see painting it white (to match the baseboards and trim) working very well since all the other wood in the room is dark. We have the piano next to the fireplace and that is a medium walnut color, then the fireplace is a bit lighter, like a regular oak, and all the other wood is dark mahogany almost black. Even though I don't like the wood color of the fireplace, I thought white would look mismatched also.

I'm also going to spray paint the brass part of the glass doors black like the rest of the cover.

So. The tile.

Our contestants are... (you can click on the pictures to see them up close)

Option A:

Neutral tile, six inch squares on the face and 12 inch squares on the hearth. I like neutral. But when I look at this tile, which happens to be a pretty close match to our wall color, I think having the wall and the tile the same will make the mantle stand out. And I don't really want that. Unless maybe I paint it white to match the wall trim. That would probably look better than the wood if we wanted to go with the neutral tile.

Option B:

Same color scheme, but different shades of the neutral in two inch tiles. This way we have something a little more interesting than all one wall/tile color. It seems to me to tie the surround color in a little better so it wouldn't be so outstanding. We would do the 2 inch tile with the same larger 12 inch on the hearth as above.

Option C:

Slate. I'm not a fan of slate. I don't usually like the darkness and the greens and blues in the average slate. I do however, like these little multil-colored squares. I like that there are golds and browns and reds with the usual blues and the grays. I think this is my favorite, as it ties in the browns of the wall and the couches as well as the other colors in the room like the dark of the other wood furniture. But I don't think I like the slate with the surround color. There is none of that oak color in the slate whatsoever. But it doesn't seem like painting the surround white would go very well either. The thought crossed my mind to paint the surround the wall color, but is that dumb? If we went with the slate we would most like find a more solid color in bigger tiles to do the hearth, one of the reddish browns or a dark gray. But what to do with the surround?

So what do I do? Ryan says we should just paint the mantle/surround white (trim color), but I'm not convinced that that won't look odd when our tv armoire/shelves are the focal point of the next wall over and make up almost the same shape/size as the fireplace but in dark wood. Does that make any sense? Does any of this make any sense? Here's a bigger picture of the room for reference:I know it's hard without seeing it in person, but I'm sitting here looking at it and I'm at a loss here too.

Any ideas?