IMO, the cabs and furniture need to coordinate, but not necessarily match. For example, we have white perimeter cabinets in the kitchen with merlot colored hood & island. Kitchen is open to family room with 2 built-ins in a slightly off white color. Cubbies are just around the corner from kitchen and can be seen through the doorway--they are also slightly off white. There is enough distance between the whites that you don't notice they don't match--they just coordinate. Our master bedroom furniture has a mahogany finish with antiqued gold pulls, the master bath has espresso vanities with antique pewter pulls and you can see from one room into the other. Again, they are just far enough apart that you really don't notice the difference & they coordinate. Stained furniture can be coordinated with painted vanities/cabinets & vice versa. Unless you're planning something totally outlandish, I think you'll be just fine. Hope this helps!

I wouldn't mix finishes in any bath, let alone a small one. I think it will be possible for you to find an espresso linen cabinet that goes quite well, though you may need to look closely to tell if it's that dark-almost-black espresso or the slightly lighter version some stores sell. If you don't find it soon enough, I would certainly think a reputable cabinetmaker could come up with one... or turn an unfinished-wood one into exactly what you're looking for. Sounds like it will be a pretty bathroom... cool shower base... wish it fit our shower dimensions!

The shower is 5 x 5 (60 inch square). We don't have a tub in the room and that allowed for more floospace to be devoted to a very big shower, which I love. It's nice and roomy. I use the ledge for shaving legs and also propping a leg up to so I don't have to bend down to soap up the lower part of my leg and foot! The bench is out of the way and so doesn't detract from the size of the shower or make it feel cramped in any way. It could be used for sitting, but I never do that. I discovered an additional unexpected but very nice advantage of having such a large shower, which is that it doesn't seem to require as much cleaning as other smaller showers I have had in the past. Let me explain....since I shower while standing in the center of this big square "box", the soap, shampoo, and water don't really get splashed onto the walls of the shower very much, because I'm actually standing pretty far from the walls. The wall where the showerhead is and the bottom tiles that meet the shower pan all around do get a little wetter, but nothing much gets on the rest of the tiles throughout the shower. Even the shower glass doesn't get very wet. I clean the inside of the shower once every other week, but could probably go longer than that. There never seems to be any buildup of anything. This is with two adults using it on a daily basis. Best of luck with your project and please post pictures when you're done!

Nothing wrong with mixing up colors. The colors should coordinate a bit so they flow from one room to another. My master suite is three rooms in an "L" shape, the sitting room is in the middle. All three rooms are open to one another with doorless archways, so they do flow visually. The center room, the sitting room, has deep red/burgundy walls and a cream/ivory trim color. Off one side of the sitting room is the bathroom. The the trim and cabinets are the same cream/ivory as the sitting room, but the wall are somewhat beige. Off to the other side of the sitting room is our bedroom. In there the walls are sort of a cream/ivory, and the trim/cabinets/wainscot is a deep muted historical green. The cream/ivory sort of ties the three rooms together and the other colors sort of bounce off that. For bathrooms which can be dominated by hard surfaces (fixtures/tile/stained wood) where the color of those items can be difficult or expensive to change, I usually recommend that those hard surfaces be a neutral or somewhat muted color. Then the wall color, or soft accent items like towels and throw rugs, curtains, etc, which are easy to change, be the stronger and sometimes more vibrant accent color. The hard surface colors in our bathroom are sort of neutral (cream cabinets and trim, beige walls, natural teak for the countertops and tub deck, tile is cream and charcoal), we change the color of the towels/rugs whenever we feel like it. Sometimes to a strong color; deep green, cranberry red, etc, sometimes to a soft neutral like beige, off-white, etc. And there is nothing wrong experimenting with colors either, especially paint. At roughly 10 cents a square foot coverage for basic formulations, paint color can be inexpensive and fairly easy to change.