Staining Maple Hardwood

Stain absorption rates of maple can differ greatly as a direct result of sanding technique.

Staining maple hardwood. Staining maple is generally not recommended by finish manufacturers since the dense grain does not allow the penetration of most pigments. Many consider this a nice contemporary scandinavian look. Yeah so this is exactly what we have maple floors with dark walnut stain.

When applying a stain be sure to use a pre stain conditioner to try and even out the blotchy patches that tend to appear. Truth is staining a maple floor gives it a cool depth and unique color variations something that is impossible to duplicate the same in another floor. It tend to absorb stain unevenly which leads to a blotchy look.

Constant equal pressure with straight parallel strokes yield good maple staining jobs. The two options available are staining maple using a dye water soluble or solvent soluble or alcohol soluble or using a conventional resin based wiping stain. One of my favorite colors to stain is a color called sable black made by glitsa.

This won t completely solve the problem though. Sand the floor for both applications the best way to start is by sanding the maple floor flawlessly. We had it done like 2 summers ago not sure if you were reading my blog then.

We had inconsistent flooring in all the downstairs rooms so we had the carpets ripped up had the cherry stained maple kitchen floor sanded down to natural had unfinished maple installed in the rest of the downstairs rooms and then had. To get the wood to accept stain there is a popular method of water popping the grain water popping is the method of actually putting water evenly on the floor to raise the grain. By pre sealing the wood with shellac you can even out the color absorption.

For those of you who don t know maple is a tricky wood to stain. Dyes work better but limit the colors available. Maple is a difficult wood on which to achieve uniform stain and the appearance can look as if the stain was not applied evenly.