Coffee doesn’t just make a great stain for your new white upholstered sectional, it’s also a great natural stain for wood.
Yep, you read that correctly—coffee makes a great stain for your DIY/woodworking projects!
What You Need to Make a Natural Wood Stain with Coffee:
Running low on tung oil? No problem!
Just used up the last of your arsenic? Don’t fret!
If you have coffee and water, you have everything you need to stain wood. No cadmium required.
Well, to actually apply the stain, I suppose you’ll want some sandpaper, a rag or a paintbrush—the usual staining suspects. Oh, and wood.
Benefits of Coffee Wood Stains:
- Coffee wood stain smells good and delicious instead of overwhelming and bad
- Coffee stain doesn’t require a well-ventilated area to apply
- Coffee wood stain is less flammable than traditional oil-based wood stains
- It doesn’t require any pre-stain conditioner (and doesn’t get as blotchy as traditional store-bought stains)
- It can be easier to use than store-bought stains because it’s easier to control and the results after each application tend to be more consistent
When you apply coffee as a stain, it reacts chemically with tannic acid in the wood. (Tannic acid contributes to the color of a particular wood.)
This chemical reaction evens out the wood’s tone, which helps to reduce blotching and gives a uniform coloring to the wood.
Does the Roast Affect the Color of the Stain?
Actually, not so much—the tone is mainly affected by how much coffee you’re using to make the stain rather than the roast of the coffee.
However, while you can use any unflavored coffee, I’ve seen other people recommend using a dark roast. Whether this actually makes a difference or just sounds logical, I honestly can’t say—so it certainly doesn’t hurt to use a dark roast. But you’ll be controlling the tone of the stain primarily through how much coffee you’re adding to it.
How to Make Coffee Stain
Step #1: While standing over a new cream colored rug, balance your phone in one hand and try to play Clash Royale with your thumb while trying to take sips from a mug in your other hand.
Supplies You’ll Need:
- Coffee
- Water
- Your brewer (pour-over, drip coffee maker, etc.)
Instructions:
- Brew some coffee, just like how you would normally do it. Keep in mind that a higher amount of coffee versus water will result in a darker wood stain.
- Allow your coffee to cool, and pour it into a can, jar, or other clean, empty container.
If you won’t be using all of the stain immediately, put it into a container (i.e. mason jar) that you can put in the refrigerator to prevent spoiling.
How to Apply Coffee Stain to Wood
I’ll leave explaining this part to a professional—see a helpful video on how to use coffee for staining wood below. (He uses Folgers, but we’ll forgive him—no reason to waste flavor or the coffee with the most caffeine on a piece of wood I suppose.)
If you’ve applied any store-bought stain to wood before, it should be fairly straightforward to do the same with your homemade natural coffee stain, but check the video for more specific details before you start staining.
In the video, he also demonstrates using coffee to condition wood before applying an oil-based stain to achieve more uniform coloring.
