New Ikea Dressers

So a couple of weeks ago, I finally got some drawers. This means no more cardboard box "dressers" to clutter my room. YAY!

I ended up picking out two Ikea Malm 4 drawer dressers ($100 each) because I need a lot of storage for cheap in my tiny apartment. I considered buying a dresser using Craigslist but getting it home to Brooklyn would be such a hassle for large items. I also tried thrifting at a nearby Salvation Army only to find icky dressers priced above $150 each. Therefore, I went to good ol' affordable Ikea because I can get it delivered along with some other stuff I need/want. I <3 Ikea.

Anyways, what do you think of Malm dressers? Too plain and streamlined? Or perfectly simplistic and modern? I waver between leaving it as is and giving them a nice coat of paint with some hardware.

Speaking of hardware, I LOVE glass knobs. Anthropologie has some really pretty knobs but to buy 16 knobs (2 per drawer) would seriously add up at $8-$10 a piece.

So then I thought about DIYing some fancy looking knobs using cheap flat-topped knobs as a base from Home Depot and gluing some pretty flat glass or flat gemstone beads. Then I spotted these at Home Depot and thought "hey good enough!" for now. Wanna know the best part? The knobs were only $1.19 a piece from Home Depot! In case you're curious, they're Liberty 1-3/8" round knobs, Sundial in antique brass. The antique brass is actually a really nice color.

With flash: the knobs can sometimes look more gunmetalish than brass.

With natural light: This is a tad more brassy than what it looks like in person. 

While at Home Depot, I picked up some paint swatches to play around with. I'm really loving the blues and blue-greens. 

The other swatches of grey I used to try to match against my upholstered headboard to pick out potential accent colors if I decide to paint the dressers a lighter color and then add a dark border on the edges of the drawers.  The two swatches below are a pretty close match.

So what do you think? To paint or not to paint? Also what color would you pick?

Until next time,

Trinh