I finally found a breaker with the wood trim for sale, so I decided to give this a go and see if it was possible. (My car has piano black. While not my favourite, it does at least mean it's easy to find replacement parts, and there are no issues matching grain or colour.)

1) The wood panels are different. The holes for the parking brake switch, mirror switch, and switch strip are all larger. For instance, the parking brake switch hole on the 2015 panel is 35.5mm wide, while the hole on the later panel is 40.0mm wide.
2) The chrome trim rings are inserted from the back, which means they do not cover the edges of the panel hole (unlike the gear indicator trim ring). So widening holes in an older panel isn't really an option.
3) That being said, the mounting points for the two panels are all the same, and the 2015 switches do fit fine in the chrome rings.
4) So you need to find a breaker with the whole wood panel and chrome rings, or be prepared to pay Bentley a fist-full for the same. (I got my panel for a shockingly reasonable €220, complete with chrome trim. I paid another €195 for a black gear indicator, complete with rubber slide assembly.)

Aside from that, everything's plug-and-play. It took me a bit over an hour to do the swap. You'll need T10 and T20 Torx screwdrivers, and some trim removal poppers. The only difficult part was getting the dang plug off the back of the start/stop switch. Most of the others can be left plugged in, but this plug blocks the 3rd mounting screw. In the end I did unplug the whole switch strip because the other two plugs came out easily. Same for the plug for the back storage pocket.

Oh, and it looks boss.

 

That is great to hear! Would love to see some pictures. I put this project aside for the past few weeks as I was busy with the delivery of another car. Will have to attempt it now.

 

 

looks great! Unfortunately, I might have a hard time finding the new center console wood trim piece since mine is burr walnut. I can’t just buy the chrome pieces without replacing the wood trim right? I think I’ll be able to replace the gear shifter for now.

 

Try to buy the chrome ring with the gear indicator cover. They have a very slightly different profile. (I used my old one, but you can see in the pictures that the curve around the bottom is slightly different, leaving a slight gap at about 7 o'clock.)

Part numbers are 3W3863212 (up to 2015) and 3W3863212A (from 2016).

 

Thanks, will do that for now. I personally think the shifter indicator makes the biggest difference. Was it all plug and play? Will i be able to replace just the softer indicator without unplugging the start button? I’m assuming that you didn’t have any errors etc after replacing the shifter trim.

 

All plug-n-play. The shifter indicator cover has 4 tabs on the sides that you need to release with a screwdriver. You can possibly get to them with the wood trim still in place, but you can definitely get to them by popping the wood trim out of its holders and just lifting it a bit without unplugging anything.

No errors on the dash. I didn't run a full VCDS autoscan, but I wouldn't expect it to throw any codes.

 

Just a quick update: I have since run a full VCDS autoscan (for other reasons), and as expected, it reports no error codes from the transmission.