The bed is gorgeous and I'm so happy with my purchase. The bed came in a really heavy box and would have been impossible for me to break apart on my own without help from my husband. Even he had to break open the box and take several trips to bring up the pieces to our bedroom. Like other reviewers here, it took him around 3 hours to put together the bed. I helped here and there but if someone was putting together the bed on their own, it would them a few hours. There are many pieces and you kind of have to figure out which pieces go where. Once you do, you need to spend a lot of time screwing in the bolts. We were so happy with the results. The bed is made of a linen fabric and the color is a medium gray.