The photos make the bronze and wood combination appear to have a much greater contrast, but in person, they are almost the exact same color. It's very warm and more brown, but they still match our cabinets well so we decided to keep them. The wooden part is also rough material, and probably needs to be coated with proxy or something, it's been catching our clothes. We opted to not add the backings because these stools are very large (and ours showed up without hardware??) and they won't fit far enough under the counter.