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Can someone with an West Elm bed comment. I always see their furniture for sell in personal ads.

Man, those are some thick mattresses!

Finally one made for a california king bed. Has anyone tried these out yet?

I find the whole West Elm "look" so incredibly tiring. This could just as easily be an ad for Ty Pennington at Sears.

ENOUGH with the freakin' chocolate stain...we've all moved on, shouldn't they?

I like the chocolate stain. We combined it with pumpkin-pie-orange in our bedroom and it looks great.

@luvdecor: We've had the WE overlapping squares headboard and a low frame for about a year and it's working out well. They seemed to have solved their sturdiness issues. My only complaint is that the finish cracked in last winter's dry weather, leaving pine-colored lines. I haven't found a furniture pencil in the right shade to fill them in yet. They're not immediately noticeable, but they're there.

MAybe West Elm wants its chocolate stain to be its signature color....

Back when those of us who love chocolate brown (not as a trend, but as a personal preference) despaired that all IKEA offered was blond wood, West Elm was a godsend.

I thought they were over the brown too...guess not. But moreso, the pricing seems too high unless their quality has increased substantially over the last couple of years.

I wish West Elm had a bigger variety of stains/colors to choose from. Sometimes I see a nice piece in their catalogs that would be just perfect...if it were not for the color.

If they want to continue with the chocolate brown, fine. But I would like to see more variety along with that because chocolate brown furniture won't relate to the rest pf my home.

That dark stain does limit some of the other colors that can be combined with it and still look tasteful.

It just dawned on me that maybe West Elm got an over-shipment of chocolate vaneer in a few years ago and maybe their warehouse is choc-full of it so they have to get rid of all of it before thay can produce furniture with other finishes. LOL. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt.

The chocolate or espresso stains are great at dressing up crappy raw materials!

Ideally, when someone enters your space for the first time, they should be thinking about how beautiful the furnishings are, versus wracking his/her brain trying to remember the name of the furniture piece from the last West Elm/cb2 catalog. But then again, who knows if, in 30 years, these pieces will be considered early 21st century classics to be treasured like the Eames and Saarinens of today. However, given the shoddy build quality and materials, I doubt any of these will have held up.

I don't think West Elm is trying to be Eames or Saarinen. My friends and I always saw them as the darker-wood counterpart to IKEA--similar price point and concept, but they had to differentiate themselves somehow. Soon after IKEA started offering dark wood, too.

To those who continually say WE has shoddy quality, what, exactly are you basing it on? A broken chair in your living room?

And, for this money, where are you getting items of "higher quality"?

Enough with the WE hating. It's more tired than chocolate stain.

Btw, last time I was in WE, they had chocolate, acorn, white, silver and beet finishes available on many of the pieces. Quitcherbitchin.

Just want to add that West Elm carried a number of items in "blonde" a few months ago. Some of it is still available on their website. I'm guessing there wasn't enough demand for it since it seems to have disappeared from the stores. Or perhaps it is more a seasonal summer color?

I used to work for West Elm a few months back. They offer an "acorn" finish which is like a darkish oak, some black finishes, some white finishes and were planning to introduce some "silver" finished pieces and the infamous chocolate. These other finishes are usually on-line exclusives. The furniture continues to be of poor quality unfortunately. Most are made of poor grade particle board and very cheap flimsy hardware. Please remember these are mostly built it yourself pieces and are extremely over-priced. I left working there after I discovered I was selling over priced pretty looking junk all made in China. I cannot even begin to tell you about the high volume of returns of the fake wood cracking, splitting suddenly, easily warped and tons of wobbly chairs with cracked joints. Seriously Ikea's furniture is much better made and much cheaper. West Elm only copies the expensive furniture with dollar store construction.

Piping in a bit late... we had one and it was horrible. It was shaky and flimsy. Just awful. I have never found West Elm stuff to be high quality.

I wish I had found apartmenttherapy before I bought this bed. It's pretty sturdy, but it's too big for my mattress. The slats show around the edges. Plus, the catalog said that it could be used with or without a box spring--however, it is very tall with a box spring. It looks ridiculous with a box spring and a mattress. I just bought a matress and box spring too, so I'm stuck with a box spring I don't want.

I like the chocolate though. I can't keep track of what color wood is in style. I used to be really into light wood, but recently I've started liking the chocolate. I mix finishes though. I don't like everything to be too matchy.

On the plus side, the drawers in this bed are nice and big.

Thank you, Bridget. So over the chocolate stain.