I would love it if my house did not look like it was all decorated on the same day or even the same year. A home evolves over time and what one does in it and what one owns should reflect growth. I have mostly old antiques, anywhere from 200+ -70 years old. Our house was built in 1950 as a tract house with no character and none added over the years. There were no cool MCM touches or if there were, they were taken out for very bland cheap finishes throughout. We are going with a lot of clean lines and a 1930-1940s vibe. Kinda Deco, sorta modern, as if someone from then owned old stuff but was modernizing as they went along. I love each piece of old furniture and would never part with any of it, but am decorating in a different style that will work with it somehow. I'd hate to feel locked into a look or time period with no room for creativity. I'd also hate to be matchy matchy and have my chance at decorating begin and end with one look. Doing more than one room gives me a chance to use several pretty colors, different tile choices and unique schemes. Our palette will work well together as we recently put all our paint choices in a grouping on the table and nothing clashed or was out of place. Yet we will have many different shades working different vibes as you go through our house (currently white from p.o.'s, ugh). I just wish I had more rooms and esp more kitchens to decorate as I love putting it all together. If I had to make one choice of wall color, one cab color or one floor choice, that would take a lot of fun out. Our only uniform themes will be the use of chrome for hardware & fixtures and white for moldings. We will be putting a contemporary couch set in our new den, yet also have a more traditional living room and entirely different style couches and seating there. Our coffee and end tables will have nothing in common between the 2 rooms either. The den floor will be a tile with a pattern in it (a faux tile area rug) and the living room will have wood floors. It may sound hodge podge to someone else, but when it comes together, I just can visualize how comfortable and homey it will be. I'd be mortified if someone thought I copied a JC Penny's catalog or even the Restoration hardware catalog I drool over, lol. This is your chance to make your home personal and special. Have some fun and throw a little quirky in, but mostly enjoy the decorating because we are lucky to be able to do it and you may not get many more big re-dos once it is done!

It does not need to match. But that's my opinion. Some folk are more sensitive to matchy-match finishes than others. If you really feel compelled that you need to have it all match for your own satisfaction, then have at it. But if you're matching it because you think others may think your design choices odd...I encourage you to design for yourself. Not others. More opinion: Think of things being in groupings. The shower. The vanity above the countertop (faucet, etc). The vanity below the countertop (door/drawer knobs and pulls). And so on. Sometimes everything all matchy-match is just wonderful. Sometimes it's overwhelming or monotonous. Too much of the same. Too much variety can look haphazard and disconcerting to the eye. There's no flow. But there's a sweet spot in between, I think all can be well as long as things somehow relate to one another. I always go along the lines of style being one thing, color another, and finish a third. Again, it's usually good to keep them some of those three things related as you go from one grouping to the next. A contemporary "some thing" might not look right next to a traditional "other thing", especially if one was a patina'd ORB and the other was polished chrome. All three things are different. My master bathroom has to be the least matching of any I've seen. My wife picked out what she wanted, but we grouped things together. She chose ORB sconces, so I painted the mirror in between the sconces to match the color of the ORB. I felt having the mirror the same color as the sconces sort of added visual mass to that grouping. Without the ORB-colored mirror, the sconces might have looked lonely out there on their own. That's one grouping. We have a polished nickel faucet on top of the countertop. However, below the countertop, the knobs and hinges are brushed pewter. While different, they relate as they're in the same color family and similar in style. My wife's countertop make-up mirror? Polished chrome. In the shower? Polished Chrome. All by itself, its own grouping. All that non-matching stuff, it may sound absolutely gawd-awful, and some might think it is. But my wife is happy with how it looks, and if she's happy, I am too. One thing I will say is that in the design and construction phase, you fret over every detail. But after 6 months you'll probably grow blind to the things that kept you awake at night with worry.

Katherine, Share some pics of your existing cabs and BR finishes and your choices- we love voting! I spent months (cuz it took us over a year to do our Basement BR) picking hardware to match. I did get all shiny chrome and love how it all relates. But my existing upstairs cabinet hardware doesn't match the fixtures at all, and I never gave it a second's thought when we bought the house, and I would hazard a guess that no one has ever even noticed. Think of the cabinets as furniture- I bet you have rooms in your house where the furniture hardware does not all match!

Something like this is pretty subjective. I won't even try to answer this because of that (and also because my approach to lighting is much more utilitarian than most folks'). You are the one who will live with it. My best suggestion is to try it and see how YOU like it. That's what counts.