The Nicest Bed

Okooko Fusion Bedroom Furniture

Featured item: MAR 13, 2008

New Zealand furniture brand Okooko brought their sleek and modern designs stateside just last year. The low profile pieces have a West Elm esthetic, but they're way more elegant (and much less ubiquitous). Plus, the Fusion collection offers unique storage options, like cubbies hidden beneath the headboard.

All Okooko furniture is constructed from solid, sustainable wood, while the brand's mattresses are made with 100% natural latex and covered with organic bamboo fiber. Plus, the company pledges to plant one native tree for every piece of furniture sold.

My husband and I are in the market for a set of bedroom furniture. Though heading over to the nearest discount furniture warehouse would certainly seem the most economical way to go, I'm leery about how long something that's probably made from particleboard covered with wood veneer will actually last. We'll certainly need to save up for the pieces in the New Zealand-designed Okooko Fusion collection, but buying them should help us sleep more soundly, as they're made from solid wood and will last us a lifetime (which actually saves us money in the long run). Plus, my green side can rest easy knowing that forests weren't depleted to make them; Okooko uses 100% sustainably sourced wood in all of its collections of contemporary bedroom furniture, only harvesting trees at a rate that's geared to the environment's capacity to replace them. When possible, they'll even use trees that were felled naturally instead of uprooting them. The Fusion collection takes this eco ethos even further, as the pieces are made from leftover panels of native Rimu wood (in various natural grain shades from reddish brown to yellow) that have been permanently fused together through a special jointing process—hence the name as well as the mosaic-like, multi-tonal appearance. And because Okooko replants one tree for each piece of furniture they sell, I know not only will the bed carry me through this lifetime, but the New Zealand forests should be around for the next.—Megan O'Neill

Note: To purchase pieces from the Okooko Fusion collection ($230 to $5,275), contact the Philadelphia showroom at (215) 667-8240. For more information and to view other designs, visit www.okooko.com.

Tags: okooko bed fusion home furniture