Nov 6, 20182 min read

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.