Solid wood is a great choice for both furniture and flooring. But from a decorating standpoint, is it a good idea to use both in the same room? Or is wood in the furniture and on the floors too much of a good thing?
If you love the look of wood you’re in luck. There’s no reason you can’t pair wood furniture and wood flooring in the same room. If you want it to look good, though, there are a few decorating tips to keep in mind.
1) Don’t Match Furniture and Floor
If all the wood in a room is the same color, it can make the space look boring because the furniture and floor will blend together too much. While you can use rugs to help the wood furniture stand out from the floor, it’s still more visually interesting to mix-and-match wood types. Using different wood finishes is also easier since it’s often hard to find an exact match. Especially if you’re purchasing the furniture pieces and flooring at different times and/or from different suppliers.
2) Limit The Number of Wood Types
While mixing wood types is a good idea, you probably won’t want every single furniture piece to be a different species, color, and texture of wood. Two or three different finishes is usually all that a room can handle. And it’s often a good idea to pick just one wood to be the dominant color in the room, then use the other color(s) more sparingly. In a dining room, for example, you could make the trim, flooring, and cabinet or hutch all the same color then use a different wood for the table and chairs.
3) Think About Wood Species
Each wood from a different type of tree has a different natural color. And if you plan to stain the wood, remember different species of wood take stain differently and using the same stain on two different pieces of furniture is no guarantee they’ll look the same. The tree’s species also affects a wood’s grain. Some woods have a large, open grain while other grains are smaller and less noticeable.
4) Find A Unifying Trait
It’s a good idea to find at least one trait that all the different woods in a room can share. One of the most popular is shared undertone. Different woods often look best together when they share a similar undertone. Try to keep the different woods in your home in a similar color family (e.g. warm blond furniture with reddish floors, or ebony-stained furniture with cool gray floors). You could also go for a more subtle unifying trait, such as similar grain patterns.
5) Focus On Creating Balance
To keep the room from looking lop-sided, it’s generally a good idea to spread the different wood colors out. If you have a natural pine table on one end of the room, for example, you’ll want another piece of light-colored wood furniture on the other side of the room. Alternately, using one piece with a very different wood finish can create a strong focal point. Then you can create visual balance in other ways, such as using the same color in rugs and curtains.
If you’d like to start customizing wood furniture for your space, get in touch with us. We’ll be happy to help you select the right wood species and finish to coordinate with the floors in your space.
