How To Stain Maple Floors

Some types of wood like pine cherry birch and maple are notoriously difficult to stain.

How to stain maple floors.

How to stain maple wood floors that are blotchy. 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. Maple is a difficult wood on which to achieve uniform stain and the appearance can look as if the stain was not applied evenly. Maple is a closed grain wood this means the wood does not like accepting anything into its pores which includes stain.

Maple is notorious for blotching. Most hardwood floor companies won t stain maple the usual reasons being that it will be blotchy and uneven. Staining maple is generally not recommended by finish manufacturers since the dense grain does not allow the penetration of most pigments. Hard maple floors offer a nice light bright look to a room and are often paired with matching cabinetry when the home is built.

I lived for years in a boston area apartment with maple floors. Moisture chemicals and even fungus can migrate through finishes to make black marks. In this article we ll show you how. In my own flooring business natural wood floors i have been asked to stain many maple and hickory floors when refinishing but i usually tell my customers no.

That usually makes them unhappy but the reason is that the grains in both maple and hickory flooring can be very hard in spots and very soft in others. They can also pose distinct care challenges. Sand the floor for both applications the best way to start is by sanding the maple floor flawlessly. A board that has a nice attractive grain pattern can end up with dark splotchy areas after you apply the stain.

Dyes work better but limit the colors available. Translated this means that either they don t know how to do it it takes extra work to do or they think that it is supposed to look like a stained oak floor and since it doesn t it must be wrong. So i had to live with it plain. But there s a simple way you can prevent most stain blotches.

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. Y es you can have your maple floors stained a different color. However after just a few years the maple yellows considerably and loses the nice. Maple floors and furniture contribute a warm natural look to a home.

It is an extremely hard wood that blotches due to poor sanding technique. Many consider this a nice contemporary scandinavian look.