I think you need to stay neutral to ensure that your couch and room colour are cohesive. The odd colour out ... that pops out at me when I first look at your photo's is the silver around the wooden TV cabinet doors. I would suggest long term (if you are keeping that furniture) that you try to incorporate more of that colour into the room to add balance...... but back to the couch. I would go fawn / beige colour and then you can add colour back into the room with cream / dark brown tones in cushions and maybe a casual throw. Alternatively if you repaint the feature wall from brown to a darker shade of grey I would go with a medium grey couch which would also match in with the silver on the TV cabinet and then you could put a lovely textured silver / grey floor run between the couches and move your coffee table to the centre of the room / rug.

Yes we are replacing treated pine with a hardwood this time but I just want to make the right choice. Still it's nice to hear you are happy with it . Anything will be a big improvement I do like the idea of an Australian hardwood that is from sustainable sources though . I gather it's been down a few yrs and you haven't experienced the shrinkage someone else complained of ? Thanks for the feedback . This site is great :)

We used spotted gum for our decking and love it! We got it for $4.25 linear metre from Masters (any lengths that were inferior they were happy to replace). Our deck was built next to our near-white pavers so merbau was out of the question due to its leaching (plus we also were wanting an eco-friendly local hardwood if possible).

Merbau is an imported hardwood apparently from Indonesian 'sustainable forest's'.... I'd stick with local hardwood's as you will know well truly that they are 'sustainable forest's'..... It's only a few bob more so may as well support aussie job's as well as the environmental factor's such as transportation. Tallowwood is a good outdoor timber but so is spotted gum and ironbark. Just come down to cost for me as all aussie timber is world standard quality. You could put fibre cement sheet on top of rafters then colorbond over. Lot of options to choose from, plywood, t&g timber as well as the fibre cement sheet. Depend's on the 'look' you're after, budget, etc.