To Mix or Match Wood Colors and Textures

The following is a guest post from Shaina at Food for My Family:

Do you mix and match wood tones and textures in the same room? While it can be easy and convenient to buy a furniture set, mixing different pieces from thrift stores or garage sales can be thrifty and cost-efficient. However, ease of decorating and thriftiness are not the only reasons you could choose to either match wood grain or not. Your decision to mix or match woods in a room could be to obtain a particular style, theme or feel you want while decorating and designing your home.

The matching dark brown wood of the furniture in this living room brings warmth and comfort when contrasting the painted cement block walls and the blue floor.

This living room mixes wood texture and tone as freely as it does color and patterns, giving an updated look to the more traditional style of the furniture.

Nurseries are always so much fun. The clean-lined furniture set is accented throughout the room with reds and blues, continuing the modern feel.

This nursery pulls the colors from the wall mural right into the whitewashed changing table, the natural tone of the crib and the light hardwood floors. The result is classic and comfortable.

Mixing pieces and styles in the table and chairs, china hutch and bench give this dining set an eclectic feel while staying in the same wood tone.

Whereas this dining room creates its artistic feel by pulling together different styles of chairs and contrasting textures and wood color.

Bedroom sets are a popular option to give instant style and a clean slate for adding your own touch through colors and accessories.

This bedroom manages to pull together several texture and wood grain pieces to give it a cohesive style all its own.

Pairing the classic bed and the shabby chic dresser brings a country romantic feel to this sunny room.

If mixing woods in one room isn’t your thing, Arizona designer Elizabeth Spengler suggests mixing them throughout the house. She shares her technique on the American Hardwood Information Center’s website.

“Elizabeth also advocates a mix of different wood species throughout the house, such as a rift-cut oak in a contemporary kitchen with birds-eye maple furniture in the dining room and olive ash burl pieces in the living room.”

“Even hardwood floors in adjacent rooms may vary ‘as long as you use some transitional device to make it work,’ Elizabeth says. Her favorite: a border incorporating the wood species or color from the floor next door. ‘Just make sure there’s enough contrast to show you mean it,’ she says. ‘Near-misses don’t make it.’

My house has both matching wood tones and rooms pulled together with different pieces I fell in love with or owned already. My kitchen and connected dining room are all maple, while both my living room and family room have been pieced together.

What is your design preference? Do you mix wood tone and texture in the same room, or do you prefer keeping the same wood varieties and types segregated to different rooms of the house?

Shaina is the home cook and wannabe photographer behind Food for My Family, where she shares recipes, tips, opinions and her philosophy on food as she wades through the process of feeding her family, her friends and anyone else who will let her.