I took up woodworking and carpentry recently as a hobby and have built a few items to grow my skills (most recent build I completed is here). I've been cobbling together pieces of carpentry/woodworking equipment here and there and feel I've got sufficient tools to start my next endeavor - furniture. For my first furniture item (other than the small boot racks and shelves I've built) I'm going to tackle an entryway bench so when we come in and out of the house we have a place to sit and take off boots. Our entryway has a nook measuring 50" deep by 60" wide for such a bench (the space is currently empty). The nook is just inside the front door and across from a mud room (small 45"x70" walk-in closet for jackets, boots, etc.).

Since this will be the first furniture item of size I've built for inside our home I'd like it to be made out of decent wood. I'm planning on doing something fairly simple. But I also don't want to spend a ton on the materials. I'd like to stain this a darker tint since most of the wood/trim in our home is darker oak. Any recommendations on what woods I should consider for this build?

Thanks!

The answer is seemingly obvious and you've already answered it - oak.  

Oak is strong enough for a bench.  It will blend in with the rest of your home.  It is terrific to work with - cutting, planning, sanding, finishing,...


Don't worry about the small cost differential between oak and poplar or pine.  Instead, focus on your labor and the lifetime of use you'll get out of the finished piece.

If you use white or red oak, get quarter or rift sawn.  
It is so much nicer looking than plain sawn oak, and significantly more dimensionally stable as temp/humidity changes with the seasons
The difference in price for the wood for a small project will be sort it and shouldn't be that much more.

Find a used church pew and modify the crap out of it somehow. Re-purposed items like this are always a big hit.

This and you will find that working with hardwoods is much more enjoyable than working with pine.  

I used mainly oak for years when building utilitarian type projects - things that needed to be strong, and would get occasional dents + dings.  I switched to hard maple a few years ago, and I think it's superior to any domestic species of oak.  It has a tighter grain, so there is less tear-out when drilling and cutting.  I still love working with oak, but I find hard maple is more forgiving to work with, and more durable than oak in many applications.  A lot depends on the quality of each you're able to buy locally.  Really nice oak started to get scarce a few years ago, that's when I switched to maple.

ETA - About the only time I'd choose oak over maple is if I was applying a light/natural finish.  Natural finished maple is pretty boring.

Thanks! That is good to know. I will hit up the lumber yard a few towns over to see what they have in stock. The local places (Home Depot, Menards, etc.) tend not to have very good wood.

Maple is notoriously hard to stain evenly.
It is dense enough to resist penetration.
Even if it is not 'rock' maple.

It also has rather bland figure.

Good point, but it depends on what type of finish you're hoping to achieve.  Some people sand everything up to 320 grit, then they wonder why stains don't penetrate.  If you sand up to 320, aniline dyes and colortone work well.  For something like a bench, that's going to receive a fair amount of wear and tear, minwax stain usually works fine if you only sand up to 150 grit.  What level of finish you choose should depend on the intended use of the project.  I've heard horror stories about staining maple, so it's not a wood I would choose for fine furniture.   But, for the types of projects I use it for, I'm not looking for a perfectly even, flawless mirror finish.  FWIW, this is a test piece of hard maple sanded to 150 grit with two coats of minwax walnut stain: