Dark wood or light wood?

I hate stain. Personally i think the wood should be the wood, the natural color the final color. When I made cabinets I saw so many people get the same animal: Red Oak with Provencal 211 (I think) stain. DAH! brown wood. The sacrilegious nature of it. I guess I am a purist.

-- Don't blame me, I voted for no one.

I lurve maple and oak. However cherry, mahogany and walnut are too beautiful and in the right circumstance can’t be beat.

-- I meant to do that!

I like my wood how I like my meeting. Dark.

-- Shooting down the walls of heartache. Bang bang. I am. The warrior.

For home projects, I am going pretty dark now. I tend to use General Finishes Gel Stain in Java. Our house is all alder or pine stained dark. But over the years it has lightened. I am replacing all the Anderson pine trim as we remodel each room. Alder trim stained in Java is getting us close to the original color, and matching the 6 panel doors, which didn’t seem to fade like the trim faded. Funny, when we bought the home in 1983, oak was all the rage, but our builder did not offer it. Now so many people are abandoning oak in favor of dark woodwork. We are replacing carpet and tile on main level with hardwood. I think we will go with a color much lighter than the doors and trim. All dark might be too much.

If I had my choice of woods in a custom home, I’d be tempted to do all light maple—doors and trim, just to have something really light, and so different than what we have currently.

-- Lee

I agree with SirIrb, I do not use stains to change the color of wood. But I do like darker colored woods – my favorite is black walnut. I see nothing wrong with mixing wood colors in a house or in a room, provided they compliment each other. It takes more than one tree to make a forest.

-- Leafherder

Some trans tint dyes can do wonders to figured wood in the right combos

-- I meant to do that!

SirIrb! Exactly how I feel. LEAVE THE COLOR ALONE! Seal it wax it what ever but don’t color it

-- If you don't Play, you can't win

I like a mixture of the two. Like Hickory or English walnut.

My original comments were regarding interior finishes, as I think the OP was implying, with references to dark wood making a room look smaller. I’d certainly agree with most everyone concerning my wood projects. I never use stain. Too many crappy looking stained pine projects in my early days! I tend to use shellac, wipe-on oil or a wipe-on poly finish.

-- Lee

Don’t like dark except something like walnut burl or crotch, but I can’t stand plain light woods. Curly maple without a little color to set off the grain is a waste of good wood. Just about everything out of my shop has some color added to the wood to enhance the grain. Some amazing things can be done with a little color, primarily dyes vs pigment stains. Some simple finishing techniques will take away all those fears of adding color to wood.