Figuring out if a Kitchen faucet, piece of cabinet hardware, or Bathroom shower head are a chrome or nickel finish can be tricky. They both look so similar to the untrained eye but wrong - they're both very different! Here's an easy way to distinguish between the two:
When you look at the two side by side, polished nickel has a yellow or gold undertone while polished chrome has a blue undertone. Polished nickel is warmer in feeling and polished chrome is stark and cooler. For a modern look, polished chrome is almost always chosen for its clean, sleek appeal. If timeless is what you're going for, polished nickel provides some depth and warmth with its richer gold hue.
Deciding which finish you should choose on your project comes down to personal style but one key factor that you should keep in mind is not to mix polished nickel and polished chrome together. This would appear to make things clash instead of matching, as there difference in colors becomes extremely evident once they're put next to one another. Mixing finishes is not a problem and is a popular trend which makes a house feel more like a home as if things were layered and added through years of living and history. Polished nickel mixes beautifully with brass or gold finishes which are currently at the forefront of design because of its yellow hue. Polished chrome looks great with black finishes.