What you need to know about staining wood – that’s how it works

You want to paint wooden furniture, but the wooden structures should remain visible? Then you should stain the wood. It’s one of the best ways to upgrade your furniture when you renovate of room, but you don’t want or you don’t need to invest in new furniture pieces. Instead of being wasteful, you can reuse some of the best furniture pieces, but you can give them a new life just by staining the wood. Wood is a very durable material and items made of high-quality wood are often expensive, so it’s only natural that you want to use them for as long as possible.

Wood staining is used as an alternative to paint while preserving the natural structures and peculiarities of the wood. Even if you want to build furniture yourself or give it an antique look, you should treat it with wood stain. However, staining doesn’t protect the wood from mold and moisture, which is why a final seal is recommended to be applied.

Which effects do you obtain by staining wood?

If you stain wood, the stain penetrates deep into the first and last layer – resulting in wooden pieces with the following effects:

1. The fibers are only colored, without covering the structure.
2. The natural color is underlined or highlighted.
3. The grain is emphasized.
4. The contrast in softwoods is emphasized and the positive structure maintained.
5. Differences between several types of wood are covered.

Types of wood stains

If you want to stain wood, you can do it in many wood shades, but also in bright colors. The final color is later obtained from the stain, the texture of the wood and the surface seal. The staining method is also decisive: chemical staining tends to emphasize the grain; staining with pigments or dyes easily obscures the fiber flow. If you work with special stains, you can even emphasize the pore structure.

You can either buy ready-to-use stains or mix them with warm water as a powder stain. Water-alcohol based and solvent-based stains are suitable for fine and coarse-pored types of wood. You can also stain wood with a water-based stain, which is the most environmentally friendly option. Color and stain extracts can be used to obtain different shades of stain.

Dos and Dont’s

• Use metal-free brushes for staining
• Shake color stains well before use
• If you stain large wood items, you should do it all at once, to obtain a uniform color.

Staining wood in five steps

Staining wood is not that difficult. Actually, it’s pretty easy – if you follow certain steps:

1. Before starting, you should remove any metal hardware on the desired piece of wood or furniture. Wood stains react with them, which can lead to unwanted color differences.
2. Do a stain test: on a less visible surface, check how the wood reacts to the stain. Depending on the type of wood, the color may vary. If you don’t like the result, you can still change it up.
3. Pre-treatment: first of all, damp the wood surface that will be stained so that the wood pores can better absorb the stain later. Apply lukewarm tap water with a sponge. After the wood has dried, you can sand wood fibers that have settled through the water with sandpaper. Important: afterward, thoroughly remove any resulting abrasion residues such as dust and wood fibers.
4. Now you can start: apply the well-stirred or shaken solution with a wide brush evenly and in a thick coat along the grain. Then brush across and finally back to the grain. After a drying time of about 15 minutes, you should remove excess stain from the surface with a cloth. Now you are done.
5. About 6 to 8 hours after application, the stain is dried. Important: during staining, the wood is only dyed. To protect it from moisture and mold, therefore it’s recommended to treat the wood with lacquer, wood oil or wax. Don’t apply any of the products until the stain has really dried completely. Otherwise, you will ruin all the work you did so far.

These tips are meant to help you if you want to stain wood on your own, but if you want to make sure the job is done right or if you have more complex renovation or remodeling work in mind, acquire the help of professionals in this field. If you plan a kitchen remodeling, a bathroom remodeling or any other type of remodeling project, the Good Remodeling team is here to help. Feel free to contact us for a free estimate.