Wood Stain Dyes

There are many choices available to woodworkers who want to add color to their projects. Some techniques are easy to accomplish, others can be more complicated, but all can be mastered with a little practice. Pigments and dyes are easy to apply, and achieve even results.

Stain Dyes are made of much smaller particles, which are dissolved in a solvent. You can find them in powder or liquid form and mix your own colors. The solvent can be alcohol-, lacquer-, oil-, or water-based. Dye stains afford much better clarity than pigment stains, so you can see the patterns in the wood grain more clearly after finishing. Dye stains also tend to penetrate more deeply, leaving more color on the wood surface after they’ve dried. They are slightly more difficult to use than pigment stains, with a greater risk that something can go wrong. One common problem is overlap, where streaks of darker color emerge when some areas receive more stain than others. One way to avoid this is to flood the surface as quickly and thoroughly as possible. It also helps to pre-wet the surface with the same solvent used to make the stain - water and alcohol are the most common. That will lessen the amount of stain that soaks into the wood fibers.

The pre-wetting technique is especially useful for applying water-based dye stains. By flooding the surface first, and then letting it dry, you’re left with raised grain that can then be sanded off before the stain goes on, which lessens the chances of ending up with a rough finish.

A wood stain consists of a colorant suspended or dissolved in a 'vehicle' or solvent. The suspension agent can be water, alcohol, petroleum distillate, or the actual finishing agent (shellac, lacquer, varnish, polyurethane, etc.). Colored or 'stained' finishes, like polyurethane, do not penetrate the pores of the wood to any significant degree and will disappear when the finish itself deteriorates or is removed intentionally.

Two types of colorants are used, pigments and dyes. The difference is in the size of the particles. Dyes are microscopic crystals that dissolve in the vehicle and pigments are suspended in the vehicle and are much larger. Dyes will color very fine grained wood, like cherry or maple, which pigments will not. Those fine-grained woods have pores too small for pigments to attach themselves to. Pigments contain a binder to help attach themselves to the wood.

The type of stain will either accentuate or obscure the wood grain and neither is superior to the other. Most commercial stains contain both dye and pigment and the degree to which they stain the appropriate wood is mostly dependent on the length of time they are left on the wood. Pigments, regardless of the suspension agent, will not give much color to very dense woods but will deeply color woods with large pores (e.g. pine). Dyes are translucent and pigments are opaque. Gel stains are more akin to paint and have little penetrating ability.