What do you think about mixing wood furniture finishes?

[chicago]

I have zero eye for design or style.  I know what I like, but I don't know how to coordinate it.  

Is it weird to mix furniture finishes?  DD's nursery will hopefully be painted a very light, cool, lavender purple.  Her crib is bright white, so I sort of assumed we would go with all white furniture.  We are looking at the Hemnes dresser that many 'nexties' have and we were thinking we would get it in white, but when we saw it in person it's maybe a little bit more cream than white and we were actually drawn to the gray-brown color.  We'll also probably get a side table and right now I have nothing I like - I'd love something silvery, but I might go cheap and get the Ikea Expedit in white. FWIW, we bought a glider that is completely upholstered in a light brown color called flax.

Here's what the gray-brown looks like -- www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/50239278

Any reason not to do this?  Will it be weird to have one standalone piece that's a different color than the rest?  Or maybe the color of the glider helps offset it?  

[Deleted]

White is a neutral color so it'll go with anything. Our crib and bookshelf are white but our changing table/dresser (the hemnes one too!) is a natural pine that we're either going to stain a forest green or leave natural. My mom does interior design on the side and she was all for a mixing of the finished bc the white goes with anything and the color adds a nice pop. I think you're good! 

[AlpineSlide]

I love mixing finishes. We have a white crib and mahogany furniture.

[mannah]

Dec 22, 2013 9:04:46 GMT -5 AlpineSlide said:

I love mixing finishes. We have a white crib and mahogany furniture.

Me too! I love white furniture and always planned to have that in the baby's room, until we found a beautiful changing table that's a nice antique looking wood thing and I plan to use that and also get other wood and white pieces. I say "found" because one day (before I was even pregnant), my husband took out the trash and came back in and said "There's some kind of little child diaper changing thing outside." (He had no clue about these things ahhaha, but at least he knew what it was). So we went out there and sure enough there was a gently used wooden changing table that one of my neighbors had put out with the trash! We live in an association with 8 townhouses. We cautiously brought it in to make sure there was nothing gross about it or wrong with it, and I wiped it down and now that's that. It's really cute and it's going to match the wooden rocking chair that my Mom used with my and my sister. So anyways, the point of all this was that I plan to keep those wooden pieces and also buy a white crib, bookshelf, and dresser. I think white and different wood finishes can look really nice together.