How to Mix and Match Wood Furniture in Bedroom

Arranging furniture around the house seems like the most natural, intuitive skill to have but do you know how to mix and match wood furniture in bedroom?

You buy something you like, and you find a place for it. How difficult could it be, right? A bedroom is probably one of the simplest rooms to decorate. 

Interior design isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but you don’t need to take a course or be an expert to make your bedroom look better. All you need is a few helpful tips and tricks.

Our homes speak volumes about us, and it makes sense to feel ‘at home’ in your abode. Be brave and experiment with your ideas instead of staying ‘safe’ with standard templates of mix and match bedroom furniture ideas. 

By learning this, or even your whole house, you can recreate the same grandeur, the same ambiance, or better still, an original style you’ll be proud to display at your next get-together! 

Don’t worry. We’re with you the whole way! We’ll make redesigning your bedroom as easy as possible.  

How to mix and match wood furniture in bedroom

Step 1 – Select a Dominant Tone for Your Room

Start by picking a dominant tone. By dominant tone, we mean the primary color in your room. Once you’ve chosen your primary color, you will have an easier time matching your furniture and furnishings’ colors and shades.

You can go about this a number of ways with our mix and match bedroom furniture ideas. If your flooring is laminated wood, you could use that as your room’s dominant tone.

After all, you won’t be changing your entire bedroom floor. Wall color is easier to change—and it won’t hurt your pocket as much.

If you don’t want to change the floor or the wall, select the biggest piece of furniture in the room to establish the tone.

Here’s a fun exercise for you. Look at the picture and identify the more dominant tone in this room—the floor or the entertainment unit?

Remember to ask yourself the same question when you’re analyzing the furniture in your bedroom. 

Step 2 – Select and Match the Undertones

What is an undertone? Undertones are the colors that work together to create a specific vibe or ambiance for a room. 

For instance, the following wood tones – Walnut, White Oak, Cherry, and Maple – are warm colors that give the room brightness and energy.

The same wood tones are stained to provide a cooler shade that produces a relaxing ambiance – Maple with a charcoal stain, Ash with a bark stain, Maple with a shell stain, and Ash with a sand stain. 

If your dominant wood tone is warm, you’ll want to match that with other shades that are also warm, and if they’re cool, you should pair them with other cool tones. 

Step 3 – Have Some Contrasting Elements

Having an all-dark or all-light matching furniture set is a thing of the past. It makes the room feel too monotonous and less organic.

Nature is adorned with beautiful graphics and colors. Use nature as inspiration to add layers and depth to your home environment. 

Whether you’re mixing white and dark wood furniture in bedroom or mixing dark and light wood furniture in bedroom, make sure the mix is natural.

Add color combinations inspired by nature by using natural wood and natural stain colors to make the design feel organic. 

Playing with contrast gives a room a more visual interest, texture, and depth. It also makes the room feel more natural and keeps it visually interesting. 

Play with contrast freely. There are no hard and fast rules here.

Except maybe one. Try to use each tone twice if possible. Repetition makes a room feel cohesive.

What you’re searching for is a delicate balance between wood tones. Try to create contrast without overwhelming the eyes. 

Step 4 – Choose a ‘Bridge Wood’

Although this step is optional, try it. It smoothens the transition between dark and light woods and improves visual layering.

Certain woods, like timber, spalted Sugarberry, or live edge slabs of Walnut or Cherry display a range of light and dark colors. 

If you’re mixing dark and light wood furniture in bedroom by creating dark flooring and lighter tones for the furniture, you could add a layer of timber furniture such as the headboard or a coffee table.

This will spread out the colors and bridge the tone between the floor and everything above it.

However, you may choose to have more white elements in the room because you want to be able to rest your eyes in places. White walls and white flooring would be best offset by mixing white and dark wood furniture in bedroom.

‘Bridge woods’ like can play a role here, too, if you use one with lighter shades to neutralize the darkness of the wooden furniture. 

Bridge woods also give that final touch of elegance every room needs. 

Step 5 – Adding Texture to Complement the Wood Tones

It is not advisable to use different shades of smooth, laminated brown in the whole room. Such monotony is not sensible in interior design.  

By now, you might’ve noticed that at a fundamental level, this blog hints at contrast but with implication. Not meaningless contrast, although that being said, the meaning is what’s experienced by you. Not some guide book.

Having more textures in the room as well as colors also adds to its visual depth. For instance, a tapestry behind the wooden headboard, a table mat, or a rug on the floor would complement the wooden furniture and provide the room with more layers.

This harmonious flow of color will also give the room a sense of continuity. It’ll feel like an entire universe designed and owned by you. Don’t hesitate to be bold and add as many varieties of texture as you need. 

Step 6 – Restore Continuity with Finish

Once you’re done, step out to take a look at your whole design. If you feel like your tones are out of place, there’s a simple solution that doesn’t require you to start all over.

You can balance out tones that conflict by giving them the same finish. If it’s a laminate wooden floor, then use laminate wood for the table in the room. If it’s a matte finish, then use a matte finish for furniture with conflicting wood tones.

This will restore continuity to your space and make it aesthetically pleasing. You can’t have too much contrast in furniture. It’s subjective. It all depends on what appeals to you. 

The Living Room

The same interior design rules and steps apply to your living room. However, the larger space and additional pieces of furniture will complicate designing this space.

While you have more room and furniture to work with, you’ll need to follow certain rules on how to mix and match furniture for living room. 

You should follow the same steps 1 – 6 from above, but keep a few things in mind:

Tip 1 – Leaving Blank Spaces

Before we pick color schemes and furniture, here’s a criminally underrated tip—leave some white space between different colors.

It’s a place for our eyes to rest, and it will match all the colors you put into the room. In a designer’s handbook, blank spaces have strategic importance.

Tip 2 – What is the Purpose of this Room

Here is something for you to actually stop and think about for a second. What are you going to be using this space for? Is it a place for you to relax and unwind?

Are you expecting a lot of visitors or professional colleagues? Try to match the design to the space’s functional aspects to give it the most practical everyday aesthetic you can. 

If you’re only using it to relax or for recreation, you might want to go for colder undertones and white flooring. If you’re expecting guests or live with your partner, it might be better to go with something warmer and brighter.

Tip 3 – Have a Consistent Theme

Unless you’re avant-garde, having a bedroom that looks like a cozy motel suite and a drastically contrasting living room that resembles an elegant up-scale lounge doesn’t really make much sense.

If you’ve gone with a certain color scheme or theme for one part of the house, try to match it to other parts, so your space feels more cohesive.

If you’ve used Maple or Oak for your wardrobe, consider having one more piece of furniture of the same undertone, such as the coffee table or an entertainment unit.

It should feel like you’re in the same home when you’re changing rooms, at least in theory. Keep the same style with maybe a few small changes since each room does serve a different purpose. 

Tip 4 – Remember to Balance

Your home is your sanctuary. It should be tranquil, and it should help you relax. Even the most dynamic styles and color combinations still employ a certain rule of balance to prevent a room from seeming like it’s caught between dimensions. 

No room should feel overdone, and the best way to avoid this is to take a step back and reflect on each space. Use some solid colors or neutral shades to offset the accents. 

Tip 5 – Accents

In addition to blank spaces, your eyes may also need some powerful focal points in a space. The living room is the best place to experiment with these since it generally covers a larger area.

Here’s your chance to go wild. The only requisite for a piece of furniture to be considered the room’s accent is to stand out. It could be a snazzy lampshade with a zebra stripe pattern or a fluffy purple cushion with polka dots or glitter. 

Tip 6 – Dining Room

Unless you have a big house with a separate dining room, your dining area likely fits into your living room.

Your dining table furniture is essential, not only because that’s where you’ll be eating most of your meals but also because that’s where any company you have spends the most time in your house. 

When mixing wood tones in dining room, remember to use the same style or theme as you have for the rest of the living room. However, since this is an important area, you’re allowed one or two stand-out features. 

The best place to experiment is with chairs. Go for something with a complex design to use as an accent for the dining area but make sure it has the same finishing as the table. 

The Bottom Line

Just a quick recap of some of the general guidelines for how to mix and match wood furniture in bedroom and other parts of your home when you’re doing it yourself:

• Follow a step-by-step approach, as described in this blog.
• Use more natural colors since humans have a strong natural affinity.
• Select matching undertones and be consistent with your style.
• Don’t follow any rules religiously—use them for reference, but it’s your home, and you’re designing it, so the result should have your original input.
• Seek balance, harmony, and diversity of tones and textures.