Refinishing My New Foyer Bench - Opinions Please!

Ever since moving into our new house I've been on the search for a bench for our foyer. Both of our previous homes had tiny entries with no space for even the smallest piece of furniture so now that I have a house with a decent sized foyer you can bet I'm going to take advantage of it! And the wall space over a bench would be perfect for adding a row of hooks:

{Dering Hall}

or a gallery wall:

{Matchbook Magazine}

I didn't have a specific style of bench in mind - just something unique and inexpensive. Last week I was looking through a few of our local Facebook tag sale sites and came across a unique wood bench that would fit my foyer space perfectly. Two people had already already left messages on the listing that they were interested in it so I added myself as third in line and then pretty much forgot about it because how often do these things actually get to the third person in line? Apparently fairly often because guess what's now sitting in my foyer?:

I know, the wood frame is an icky orange color and the seat cushion fabric isn't up my alley but I love the unique spindle design and the cushion itself is in great shape and could easily be recovered.

I could also use it without a cushion because the woven seat is in great shape:

So now I'm trying to figure out what to do with it - some options are to paint the wood black:

{Country Living}

{Pottery Barn}

or white (that's what Lauren Leonard did with what looks like the exact same bench!):

{Lauren Leonard Interiors}

or I could strip it and leave the wood natural or give it a whitewash finish:

Leibowitz and McLachlan

The only other furniture in our entry is this chest of drawers that has a graywash finish - whatever I do with the bench needs to work well with this piece:

So what's your call on the bench - do you think I should paint it? Whitewash it? How about the cushion - recover it or just take if off completely? I'd love your opinion!