Advice needed from someone with a better design eye than me :)

In My Humble Opinion
1

Long story and lots of links below:

Two years ago, we bought a dresser for our bedroom from Ikea. It’s from the Hemnes collection. (looks like this) We also bought two nightstands. They are both in the antique stain color shown in the pictures. (Here’s a bigger picture of the dresser, but it’s the wrong color. Ours is wood colored.)

Recently, we moved into a new apartment. Our new bedroom is bigger, but also has less closet space. We decided we needed to go a back and buy the matching tall chest of drawers from the same collection. But, as it turns out, Ikea no longer makes this set in the antique stain color we bought it in, although they still make it in other colors. Now we are trying to figure out a way to get another dresser in our room, without it looking stupid.

We came up with a couple of options. My boyfriend thinks we should go for something the same color by buying this dresser, also from Ikea. The color is supposed to be antique stain, and while I can’t say for sure it’s the exact same color as our dresser at home, it looked pretty close in the store. But I think it will look too mismatched to have such different styles together, even if they are the same color.

So I think we should buy the Hemnes dresser, but in black. I think it will look better to have the same style, even if they are not the same colors. However, my boyfriend thinks it will look dumb, since that will be the only piece of black furniture in the room.

So, I came up with a third option, which was to stain some black accents onto the furniture we already have, in an attempt to make them coordinate more. Here’s some badly photoshopped mock-ups of my idea:

Here are both the dressers together

Here they are with some black accents on my dresser

And here it is with more black

Okay, so to anyone who’s stuck with me until the end of this, what do you think we should do? Which way will look the least stupid, or maybe actually look good? All advice is very much appreciated and thank you in advance :slight_smile:

2

I vote that the black accents look stupid–and it’s not because of your photoshopping skills.

I’d probably pick a wood-colored dresser that isn’t the same style over a black dresser that is the same style–but my furnishings run to mismatched wood-colored stuff anyway.

The idea of picking the black dresser because it’s the same style as the existing furniture sounds reasonable, but doesn’t much appeal to me, although I won’t swear that I’ve got a better design eye than you.

3

I think the black accents look dumb too. Sorry.

I think you could rock the blue Hemnes - it almost looks like you painted yours - you could use a blue bed spread and blue throw or something and tie the whole thing togther quite nicely.

Toss some blue flowers in there and it will look like you planned the whole thing.