How To Match Wood Tones In Your Home

Have you ever been in a position where you’ve found that the cute Balinese cabinets you just bought at that delightful little antique store downtown just don’t look as good sitting next to the large mahogany dining table that you spent months waiting to be delivered?

Then you might have a case of mismatched wood. A more common situation than you’d think, there are a few factors that come into play when choosing how to match wood tones and grains in your living space.

When you’re choosing the wood for your floors, kitchen cabinets, or built-in closets, take a look at what the undertone of the wood is. Does it have cool, grey tones like Ironwood or Brazilian Ebony, reddish tones like Red Gum, or deep brown like Mahogany? But honestly, sometimes you look at wood and only the word brown comes to mind, so a useful way to find out exactly what wood tone your furniture is made from is by visiting this Goldpines link where they’ve broken down the different wood tones that come from different trees.

Once you’ve figured out what undertones you like and what your current furniture might have, it’s then easy to bring this to your interior designer to match with your kitchen cabinets. It’s safe to say that wood of similar undertones complements each other in a room. If you’ve chosen a nice, light, neutral colour for your walls like beige and a warm light brown carpet for your floors, adding pine furniture or light, yellow-toned wood can create a bright, Scandinavian look in your home that’s perfectly accented by some dark greens or browns. But if your floors are already made of the same light-toned wood, you run the risk of having your furniture blend directly into the ground, creating a sort of colour blob that doesn’t quite give off any sense of character.

To match wood on wood, a good thing to then consider is contrast.

If you’ve got the aforementioned light wooden floors, pick a darker wood that still contains similar yellow-brown undertones to give your space dimension. This will help to make your room look well thought out and can create a sense of harmony and completion when you enter the space. Yellow undertones in wood can also go very well with dark green plants and cream-coloured upholstery. Alternatively, if you’ve got greige walls and light concrete floors, a black wooden dining table and chairs might give your dining room that bold, modern feel you’re going for.

Once you’ve chosen the right wood undertone for your home, another thing to consider is how the wood grains will match. Smaller, less noticeable grains might offer a more conventional, but clean modern look, while larger grains can create a rustic, more nature-forward feel.

Like with wood tones, choosing the exact same grain size for all your wooden fixtures might create a sense of monotony throughout your home, but complemented with the right colours, can also create an attractively minimalist look. Mixing and matching different wood grains can be a feat, but there is also a chance of overwhelming the eye with too many different patterns going on in the room.

The key thing to remember when incorporating wood grains in a home is that, like with wood tones, sometimes a bit of contrast goes a long way. To keep it simple, pull together two, at the most three different grains, but offset that with clean walls or countertops that bring everything together.

If you’re torn between choosing darker or lighter tones for the wood in your house, first decide what sort of feel you want the room to embody. Darker, red wood tones like what is seen in a lot of classic Singaporean homes can give off a very retro, moody feel that’s reminiscent of 70s or 80s Singapore, whereas lighter or completely black wood can create a modern, clean look.

If you’ve chosen to pair dark wood tones with dark colours, this can create a very intimate feel in the room, but light wood tones with lighter neutral paint can make your space seem bigger than it actually is. It all boils down to the feel you want to create in each room, and the beauty of it is that not all your rooms have to look the same!

But whether you’re into modern or mid-century decor, minimalist or rustic, we’re here to help!