Brown furniture is the most unfashionable thing you can put in a room, which is precisely why we keep specifying it. A Victorian chest of drawers costs less than its flat-pack imitation and will outlive us both.
A room with one old piece of timber in it stops looking decorated and starts looking inhabited.
The trick is restraint. One serious brown piece per room — waxed, not stripped — against plaster, limestone and linen. It anchors everything lighter around it.