For centuries, woodworkers have modified the natural color of wood. Early wood stains in the 18th and 19th centuries were made by woodworkers themselves using natural materials. Even before that, oils were used as a wood finish, many of which would affect the color of the wood they were put on.
Shellac—made from an insect—has been around since the 13th century. Naturally orange in color, it was also used as a solvent for other pigments. Going further back, the Japanese invented lacquer about 7,000 BC and paints of various sorts may be even older.
So, the idea of changing the color of wood is nothing new. Historically, it seems that it is much rarer to leave wood in its natural color than it is to try and change it in some way. English oak furniture was much darker than the oak furniture today. Now, today’s oak is often referred to as “golden oak” because it has been stained a golden-orange color.
Cherry wood, which is commonly found in Early American furniture, is still considered a “rich” color for high-quality home and office furniture due to its natural red pigment. But the color we identify as “cherry wood” is much darker and redder than the wood’s natural color.
But while some people like red woods—whether cherry, cedar, or some other wood—not everyone likes red and orange tones in their wood. These woodworkers and/or woodworking customers prefer hiding the red, changing it to something more akin to brown. Fortunately, that’s actually not all that hard to do. It’s all in understanding how colors blend.
Understanding the Color Wheel
If you remember back in middle school, they taught you about the color wheel in art class… at least, they should have. The three primary colors are red, yellow, and blue. We mix those to get the secondary colors of green, purple, and orange. Those six colors make up the color wheel and every other color, except black and white, comes from mixing them together.
Here, we see the primary and secondary colors on a very basic color wheel. There’s also another color depicted, right in the middle of the wheel; a color which they might not have told you about in middle school art class. That is brown, which can be obtained by mixing any two opposite colors on the color wheel.
A whole host of different browns can be achieved, depending on which two colors are mixed to get it and the ratios those colors are mixed in. Nevertheless, they are all considered brown.
Interestingly enough, almost all browns that you find tend to be either reddish or greenish; even though it is possible for any of the other primary or secondary colors to create overtones in the brown.
For our purposes, to tone down red, look at the opposite color on the color wheel. This will land you on the other side, which is green. So, if we add green to the wood, in the form of a stain or a translucent finish, we will end up with brown. The exact brown we end up with will depend on the shade of green we use, how dark it is, and how heavily we apply it.
Applying and Mixing Colors on Wood
This is a sample of the wood padauk, a popular hardwood for crafts-style woodworking projects, due to its bright red color. I have applied Varathane’s Sage Green stain [1] to the right side. We can see some small spots of green, where the grain was more porous; but the majority of the wood has been rather effectively changed to a shade of brown.
Whether or not it is the shade of brown we want, is another question; but there are not many green stains on the market to choose from.
If we were working with a wood that is more orange (although the padauk looks more orange in the picture above than it actually is), then it might work better to use a blue stain, rather than green. Minwax produces a Royal Blue stain which could be used; so does Behr.
If we don’t like the color above, we can work with it by applying further products to further modify the color. One such option would be to add another brown stain, like walnut to darken it. Another would be to use one of the stain and varnish mixtures that are on the market.
In the sample below, I’ve added Behr American Chestnut Stain & Poly, over the Sage Green stain, resulting in something darker and more attractive. I’ve also applied it to the left, unstained, side of the piece of wood, as a comparison. We can see much more red showing up in this part, than in the part over the green stain.
To my eye, which may be far from perfect, the right sample looks somewhat like natural walnut. Meanwhile, the left sample looks something like stained cherry; both in the actual sample and in the photo above. While the cherry color doesn’t eliminate the red (partially because the American Chestnut stain & poly has some red overtones), it still produces an attractive color.
Either sample is acceptable to me, but the application of just the green stain isn’t. It accomplished the purpose of toning down the red, but produced a color that isn’t really all that attractive.
The point I want to make here is that it can be very valuable to experiment with coloration, especially when you are trying to hide an existing color that you may not like. It may very well take the application of more than one stain or tinted varnish to get the result you want. In the sample above, adding another coat of the stain & poly or adding another color of it could provide us with a much nicer result.
Always do your experiments on scrap wood, not on your actual project. Preferably, the scrap should be from the same batch of wood used for the project, so that you get an exact representation. Make notes of every step you take in your experiments, so that you will be able to reproduce them.
Don’t rely on your memory, as you can get confused by the different attempts you make in trying to get the color that you want. If you don’t have a piece of scrap wood to use for your experiments, do them on a hidden part of the project, where people won’t see what you have done.
Final Thoughts
Ultimately, toning down orange or red tones in wood comes down to understanding the basics of color theory. By using the color wheel as a guide, woodworkers can select stains and finishes that are complementary to the undesirable colors present in the natural wood. Green stains tone down reds, while blue stains can help tame orange tones.
However, achieving the perfect hue often requires some experimentation, layering different stain colors and finishes. The key is to conduct tests on scrap wood, carefully documenting each step, until the desired tone is achieved before applying it to the final project. With some practice and an artistic eye, woodworkers can transform even the boldest red woods into rich, warm browns or enhance more subtle grains and patterns.
1 Please note that the colors I chose for this example were based on what I have on hand, rather than seeking a specific result. The purpose was to show how to change the color, in principle, not how to arrive at a particular color.
Rich is a second-generation woodworker, having grown up in his dad’s workshop, “making sawdust.” Fifty years later, he’s still studying and working on improving his own woodworking skills, while also helping new woodworkers “catch the bug” for the smell of fresh sawdust. While Rich has done some custom woodworking projects, his greatest thrill is helping the next generation of woodworkers along, regardless of their age. His background as an engineer and a writer just adds to his ability to teach his true passion, woodworking.
