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One Type Wood - 6 Stains - What a Difference

Updated: Dec 15, 2018


What color can I make my piece of furniture? How do I choose a stain? Can I make this lighter or darker? These are some of the questions I get every time I question a client on what they want to do with their furniture. Color? Stain? Finish? #furniturefinsihes Seems like these should be straight forward decisions, but they are not. Many times a customer wants to turn a dark wood lighter or light wood darker.


I have put together a demonstration of what woods look like with different stains. I have chosen 6 woods: cherry, alder, maple, red oak, white oak, & mahogany. These are some of the favorite furniture woods, Then I chose 6 stains to put on each piece of wood. All of these woods can have different natural colors all coming from the same tree. This is caused by the age of the wood, the grain, and how the wood is cut.


The harder the wood the less color penetration. With these 6 woods, they are all hard woods except for the mahogany. There are ways to resolve this problem of poor stain penetration to achieve darker colors.


If you have any questions on how your wood will take a stain, contact me for answers.



Cherry Wood

Cherry Wood #cherrywood

Golden Hickory Stain

Traditional Cherry Stain



Dark Oak Stain

Dark Mahogany Stain





Clear Finish no Stain

Black Walnut Stain








Alder Wood

Alder Wood #alderwood

Dark Mahogany Stain

Traditional Cherry Stain




Golden Hickory Stain

Black Walnut Stain




Dark Oak Stain

Clear Finish no Stain







Maple Wood

Maple Wood

Dark Oak Stain

Clear Finish no Stain





Black Walnut Stain

Golden Hickory Stain




Mahogany Stain

Traditional Cherry Stain







Red Oak Wood

Red Oak Wood


Dark Oak Stain

Clear Finish no Stain




Golden Hickory Stain

Black Walnut Stain





Mahogany Stain

Traditional Cherry






White Oak Wood

White Oak Wood

Dark Oak Stain

Clear Finish no Stain



Golden Hickory Stain

Black Walnut Stain




Traditional Cherry Stain

Mahogany Stain






Mahogany Wood


Mahogany Wood

Golden Hickory Stain

Dark Oak Stain



Black Walnut Stain

Clear Finish no Stain




Dark Mahogany Stain

Traditional Cherry Stain




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