Many people strictly follow the rule that if you have silver in a room, everything has to be silver; if you have copper appliances, everything else needs to be copper. But that’s simply not true! Mixing metals makes for beautiful rooms by adding dimension and bringing in a unique decorating tactic.

If you need some convincing as to why you should mix metals, I’ve rounded up eight examples that prove just how great it can be. 

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In this living room gold is the dominant metal, but the silver in the furniture balances very nicely. In fact, if the legs of those stools were gold, it might be too much of one metal.

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This stove is to die for! I love the bronze and silver of varying degrees. Even if you have all the same metal you can mix it up by bringing in different shades.

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This room effectively ties together bronze, silver and gold – the trifecta of metal mixing.

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You can even mix metals with accessories, too – like the animals above.

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The accessories on this bookshelf are all sorts of different metals. See how the different materials garner such great dimensions?

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This backsplash does all the explaining needed: No matter the metal, if you mix a few of them together it will produce a beautiful rainbow of colors.

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This kitchen is predominantly silver, but the variation in tones makes it appear to be a room full of mixed metals.

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A natural tendency would be to shy away from putting a bunch of frames on a same wall that are made out of different metals and materials, but doesn’t it look fantastic?

As you’ve seen in the images above, mixing metals is not only fun, but it looks great! For tricks of the metal mixing trade, be sure to check out this article.