My understanding of French Provincial is that it uses lighter, fresher colours as a base, so I would suggest neutral decorative cushions in white and/or cream which are textured or patterned. I think blue is also a common accent colour for French Provincial, but I'm not sure how a lighter blue (e.g. teal) or a darker blue (e.g. French blue) would work with the charcoal of the sofa. I would suggest heading to a home decorating store with a no questions asked refund policy and just grabbing everything that you like the look of and trying them out at home. A large throw in a neutral colour may also help in lightening up the sofa.

Hokusai's "The Great Wave" has been an object of fascination through the years. One always see something new in it when you spend time on it!

Thank you @Creative Style Interior Design and @bigreader @Creativelychallenged - Thank you for your nice words. We are indeed very happy with the result. We also went through all these stages you describe, so don't feel depressed... there might be light at the end of the tunnel. Our research stage was so long and quite discouraging at times. We've always wanted to live in a queenslander, but our house is not one. This didn't stop us on going ahead adding some character to our bathrooms design (and kitchen). We started with the idea of making these bathrooms with a colonial touch but we found that it was not easy to find the elements we wanted (tiles, furniture, tapware) at a cost that would fit our budget. We learned that the type of tiles we liked (encaustic) were VERY expensive ($200+), traditional looking furniture was also very expensive... So we shifted to a more modern design...(not very happily though), and after a while of collecting ideas for modern tiles, furniture etc.. we felt quite depressed because we were compromising... updating our bathrooms with something fresher, but far, far away from what we really liked. In our view modern furniture looked very plain, streamlined and... boring, but we were doing 2 bathrooms (on a budget) so we were not prepared to spend a fortune, and we settled with modern. We ordered marble type tiles for the floor 900x600, and wood like tiles for the walls, and booked the builder to start demolition. Luckily for us National tiles called us saying that there was an error and the tiles they promised were not going to be available for 3 more months!!! Depressed again.... It took us so long to find something we liked (kinda) and now we were back to square one. Then my lovely wife said... Why don't we give it another go and try to make a more traditional design as we originally wanted.... So to make it short... we went back online with 'refreshed' energy and pressure (demolition already started) and found many things I coudn't find before: Floor tiles @ $25/m2 Subway tiles for walls @$16 the box on sale... Ensuite furniture and basin from Ikea Main bathroom furniture was an antique dresser we found in an op shop for $150 repainted and repurposed.... etc... In the end we spent approx $12,5K for both bathrooms in total :-) So, to summarise... don't dispair... just look in this website, on pinterest, magazines, google, etc... Play around with ideas and copy!... (you'll see that our ensuite is quite similar to the first photo in this discussion)... Good luck! :-)

My Home Stylist - I really appreciate your feedback. The Noguchi coffee is really nice. I think I'm getting closer to finalising the colours. I've done my research and found these. Do you think they match? Coffee table I did my research and found something similar to the noguchi coffee table but in white (thought it'll suit the white ikea table). It's aFreedom's Stockholm table . Dining Chairs I really love the chairs with timber legs but I've decided that since my apartment will be occasionally rented out I'll stick with a more conservative look. Dark Grey frabic will match my sofa. The steel........ It's similar to one of the photos on houzz. Bar Stool: Now that I have chosen a dark grey/steel leg dining chairs and an oak based coffee table, would a standard white barstool with steel leg still work well with everything else or is it starting to clash? I found some possible but more expensive options if it's starting to clash: