IKEA's furniture is a weird duck. The finish they use on all their classic "brown-black" furniture is not quite a paint... not quite a stain... it seems like a cross between both. There's enough pigment to even out the wood grain, but not enough to be completely opaque.

Pure stain turns out nice, but it doesn't match my other stuff.

So I decided to try paint. The first thing I did was try "Black Mocha" by Behr, which is supposed to be as close as you can get. It didn't seem to match at all. So I started looking all over the internet to see if anybody found something better. The most promising seemed to be this guy, who had a custom formulation matched at Sherwin-Williams. He posted the formula and everything...

I showed this to the guy at Sherwin-Williams and, sure enough, he mixed it right up.

When I applied it, the maroon component was making things look too "berry" to match. But as it dried it started getting closer. Still looks like it needs a touch of brown to be a little warmer, but you can't tell unless you really look at it, so I'm happy. Even if it is a bit too "solid" to ever truly match. Maybe in the future I'll try thinking it down and see if that makes any difference.

Or maybe I'll just repaint everything different colors and not worry about it.