Let me talk you out of staining your floors.

Words matter: Stain vs Finish.

Part of the misunderstanding here stems from the fact that in the wood flooring industry stain has a very narrow meaning. Stain refers to solid particles of pigment suspended in a solvent, applied to wood to darken or change its natural color.

Wood flooring professionals tend to assume that everyone knows that stain is quite different from finish (varnish is one class of finish used on floors, but not the only one). Finish is the generic term for any substance that can seal the porous surface of wood and provide a layer of protection and reflective sheen.

Don’t assume that your floor should be darkened.

But semantics are only part of the problem; the real foundation of this misunderstanding is the widely held assumption that all wood floors should be darkened or colored and that this is a routine and simple part of do-it-yourself floor finishing.

Most of our customers think that staining a floor is like painting a wall. How we wish that it were so.

Floor staining is difficult, finicky work, with unpredictable results.

Even flooring professionals lose sleep over this process because there are dozens of variables that can make staining go wrong. And when it does go wrong, the only solution is to re-sand the floor and start all over from the beginning. Staining floors, especially for first-time do-it-yourselfers, is a tricky business.

That’s why we do our utmost to talk you out of staining your wood floors. Here are four big reasons why:

2. Some wood species are not meant to be stained.

Before applying stain to your wood floor, you need to know what species it is. Floors made of maple, birch, and coniferous woods (especially pine or fir) are all very difficult to stain evenly. Maple and birch are tight-grained woods with very small pores, and the density of the pore wall fibers varies drastically.

In other words, the particles of stain pigment have fewer places where they can wedge themselves and those places are not regularly spread through the wood.

Pine has the same variations in pore wall density, but to make matters worse, coniferous wood fibers contain resin or sap that actively resists stain. Even though stain manufacturers provide sample chips of stained maple or pine, do not be fooled. Those sweet little chips are easy to stain precisely because they are little. Over a large, uninterrupted area like a floor, blotching and mottling will be much more apparent.

Red oak and white oak floors absorb stain more uniformly. But be aware that there is a difference between the density of earlywood (or springwood) and latewood of these species. As you can see from the photo above, the more porous springwood stains considerably darker than the dense latewood. This gives the boards a distinct zebra-striped look.

Once a customer understands the ramifications of staining a floor, the idea of a clear-coat finish starts to look very attractive.

However, if you are one of those stalwart types who, despite all the warnings, declares that you are ready for the challenges of stain, there are some things you can do to make the process easier and more successful. 

Proceed to the page Yes, I Know Staining Is a Headache…I Am Going to Try It Anyway.

4. Stain adds waiting time. A lot of waiting time.

Latex paints have set very high expectations about drying and recoat times—expectations you need to leave behind if you are staining a floor. This is because stain is just the first step in the process of finishing your floor.

Pigments alone do not provide much in the way of abrasion or solvent resistance, so most people add two or three layers of some clear, protective finish over stain.

But if your stain coat is not completely dry, it will not allow any subsequent coats to bond.

Finish that doesn’t bond will smudge and even peel off easily – sometimes it can’t even cure at all. This is a catastrophe and the only way to fix it is to sand everything off and begin again. This is a sad and very expensive circumstance. So, given the dire consequences of coating over stain too soon, we recommend that you allow stain to dry for 48 hours even under the ideal heat, humidity, and air exchange conditions specified by the manufacturer, and 72 hours is better.

All stains dry by solvent evaporation; if your windows are closed or if the heat is set too low or turned off, the solvent cannot evaporate, and the stain takes longer to dry.

Low temperatures, high humidity, using too much stain, and not wiping it off thoroughly will all lengthen the drying times.

For example, if you are staining during a thunderstorm in August, you could wait up to four days before it is safe to topcoat that stain—four days, plus a day for each coat of finish, and then a day to allow the last finish coat to cure.

This is when you ask yourself whether you want a dark-stained floor badly enough to wait a full week—or longer—before you can move furniture back into your room.

If not stain, then what do I use?

Protecting your floor with just a clear coat is perfectly acceptable. And much less stressful. Three coats of a high-quality polyurethane will allow the wood grain of your floor to just be itself. “Stain” does not add protection, it just changes the color. If this is your first DIY refinishing job, just using clear coats is the way to go. And we sell a carefully vetted selection of finishes that are easy to apply and protect floors well. When customers are undecided, our favorite go-to is PolyWhey because of its especially low-VOCs, high traffic resistance, and ease of use..