Sounds like they did not do enough coats.

Did you see/approve a sample board?

You haven't said what color or type of wood your cabinets were? The same stain on different types and colors of wood is always going to look different.

Depending on how far off the color is you can apply another coat but if you've got the time and money you should re-sand the floors and remove the old stuff. Then make sure you test some different stains (in a closet or in a corner) and are satisified with the color before applying to the entire room.

I dont have a helping answer, but somewhere along the way floor people lost their ability to do dark colored floors or something. We had ours redone several times and it kept coming out pecan, or golden. I don't exactly understand it. The make dark stains.

You may also need to combine stains to get the right look... like adding a true ebony to the intended color/matching stain as the cabinets.

Did your floor guy know you were intending to match the cabinets?

when I stained a refinishing project about ten years ago I found that only the oil based stains really worked well. The modern "non-oil" really looked weird, lightly colored, and a bit streaky.

Same goes for paint, oil really looks best, and wears better. But due to EPA regulations we must know use acrylic based paints and stains. In my world I think I end up painting twice as often when I use latex vs oil, so I am not sure how I am helping the environment...

While the effect isnt what you originally wanted maybe the floors look fine, can you post a photo?

jako

Uh-oh, somebody didn't close their italics tag!!

We did try to do more coats but it just stayed the same. My cabinets are birch and my floors are oak. I realize they stain different but they did a sample after a rough sanding and it took very dark. Once they did the final sanding the stain didn't take or soak in or something. The grain is dark espresso, almost black (like I wanted) and the rest is medium brown. I wanted to put the stain on and not wipe it off. Does anyone have any experience with that? My floor guy said it would peel or scratch off when he did the final sanding. Thanks, Connie

Jako, could you tell me how to post a photo? I would love to but I'm completely computer illiterate!

Chuck is correct -- different woods will take stains differently. Wax or poly residue will also affect color, as will dye vs. stain (they are different), and the ages of various woods. An older wood floor may be more dried out than the wood in your cabinets, and drink up more stain.

Sounds like you need to redo your floors. Make sure your floor guy knows what the end color is supposed to look like. Ditto for the "test swatch in the corner" too.

Chuck and "me" have it right. Even white and red oak will differ in finish with the same stain.

I just went through this after having Bruce hardwood floors(gunstock prefinished)installed in my loft. The stairs leading up had to be rebuilt (they where formerly contractor grade pine w/carpet). My floor guy used oak to rebuild the stairs and he mixed his own oilbase concoction to match the Bruce floors. Interestingly Bruce sells the gunstock stain but my floor guy said that its real purpose is for refininshing or repairing their floors - not treating new ones.

The good news is that you want your floors darker. Following the other writers advice of doing test pieces will get you to the desired result.

BTW: His tip on HOW to ruin hardwood floors - use Murphys Oil Soap. It will break down the poly sealant over time and and create a layer of hardened sludge.

The age of the wood affects it as much as the differences in type. I have had good success in layering another color oil stain over the first (darker, of course) -- on funiture and on molding and wood trim. As long as the grain is still open, and the color is transparent, it works (test first, of course). I cannot speak to whether this is "right" for floors. Before you sand again you should find out how many more "cuts" are left in your wood. You might not want to remove any more thickness.

A good paint store can work with you to do a custom blended wood stain.

I have never had a problem with Murphy's myself. People here seem do hate that product. I've used it for years!

There.

Sorry. Trying to ditch the italics.

Someone who I met who just stained his maple floors a beautiful black told me that he sprayed water on the floors before staining them. Apparently, the water helps the wood to absorb the stain.

I just had my floors stained two weeks ago....twice. I was so unhappy with the espresso stain that I wanted. I had specified a certain mix of jacobean and ebony stain, however the floor guy was not familiar with the look that i was going for. He just kept saying," You sure you want it that dark?" In the end, he didn't understand my vision, and used 100% ebony and put in on the floors. It looked awful. Thank god they botched the sealing job, and had to start again from scratch. This time, I was sure to watch the guy mix the 2 stains, put it on the floor, and watch it sink in. I felt kind of silly standing there throughout the process, but in the end the floor came out exactly as I wanted it. You have to be there to see them wipe away the stain. In my case, I realized that I wanted them to wipe away alittle of the stain, so that I could slightly see the grain. the wiping process is essential to getting the look that you want.

anyone who is applying stain and not wiping it up as they go is not staining correctly - some jackass did that on my mom's deck and boy did it look awful

no kidding, "the wiping process is essential"

Ariella -
If water helped the wood absorb the stain, it must have been a water-based stain, because otherwise, it seems like it should make the stain bead up and NOT soak in.

in the floor trade, it's called "water popping", a process whereby the freshly sanded floor is applied with a wet mop in order to raise the wood grain and make the wood more absorbent to stains. after several coats of sanding, the wood becomes too refined, hence tight and not porous enough to take anything in. water helps it to open up again.

generally, the stain goes down after the wood looks dry again. without water popping, you never get the true color of the stain. this is why something that looks dark on the sample board becomes golden or honey on the floor.

but remember we see less of the staining absorption problem on furniture because the wood used in cabinets typically doesn't get the life sanded out of it like a refinished floor does.

newly sanded wood is the problem, not the stain or the technique. and regardless of whether the stain is oil or water-based, the same principle applies.

trying to close the itallic tag did it work?

tag disappeared, and it did not work. I tried.

Sand, what was the proportion of jacobean to ebony that you used? I'm in the process of having my floors stained, and I want them dark. The jacobean sample the guys did looked too light for what I'm looking for, however they think it is too dark. They also say that pure ebony will look awful because it has so much black pigment that it would be like painting the floors black. So I'm looking into blending jacobean and ebony at 50:50.

The best stain to use for a dark, dark color is an oil based commercial product you can buy only at a commercial Sherwin-Williams store. It is called Van Dyke Brown wiping Stain Concentrate and the product # is S64N45. It is expesive but worth it. Hope this helps.

I do refinish wood floors and yes the colors will vary depending on the species of wood. When we do floors and there is a cabinet or a piece of furniture to match we do a small spot on the floor to be finished and sand it like it will be when we are done not just a rough spot. Sometimes with a particular stan like sherwin williams which is a little more of a penetrating stain than say minwax to make it a darker we wipe the floor with water to open the wood grain back up. You have to let the floor dry completely first before you start to stain.Works wonders.

If you are 'water popping' a floor...can you apply a wood conditioner after you do that? We have 150 yr old original pine boards that have been sanded down, and I think without the wood conditioner the stain would not take evenly...

MY HUBBY AND I JUST RE-DID OUR MAPLE FLOOR AND STAINED IT WITH COLONIAL MAPLE. I DIDN'T REALIZE THAT IT WOULD BE SO RED! I APPLIED ONE LAYER OF POLY OVER THE TOP (IN THE HOPES IT WOULD DARKEN IT SOME. IT DID, BUT ONLY SLIGHTLY. DOES ANYONE KNOW IF I CAN APPLY A DIFFERENT (DARKER) STAIN OVER THE TOP (IF I LIGHTLY SAND THE POLY FIRST) SO THAT I DON'T HAVE TO COMPLETELY STRIP THE FLOOR AND APPLY A NEW STAIN??...BEING LAZY AND MAYBE A LITTLE CRAZY HERE. LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK. THANKS!

I have whitewash colored cabinets and wondered how to go about removing the stain and restaining them a darker color. I do not really want to paint them, just stain them a nice medium oak color.

I just had my entire house sanded and stained a very dark color. The stain color looked great on a small sample, but way too dark once the entire house was stained. Is there anything I can do to lighten the floors without completely redoing them?

any recommendations for filling random gaps/spaces approx. 1/8" wide in a few areas of a wood floor?
wood putty?

I went through the rounds trying to find a way to get my floor 'espresso'. I am a designer, and have specified it before with new floors, but have never seen it done to a refinished floor. I tried it in my home, but stains gave a zebra striped look. I saw a recommendation on a post that I tried, and it worked well. I used an oil based paint (I just found the color that I wanted on a paint chip, almost black with a hint of brown/red) and diluted it with paint thinner it was very thin....worked great

We too are unhappy with the shade and unevenness of our white oak floors. We wanted it Espresso or Deep Mahogany in color. The floor store showed us a sample of Ebony, but the black had a greenish tint which we hated. They showed us a pre-made sample which we agreed was our target color. The guys who came to finish the floor were subs, didn't understand the mix of stains we wanted, suggested a Dye instead, laid down Ebony and Dark Walnut Dyes. Between the two the Dark Walnut looked pretty good. But... once it was spread over the entire house and dried, it looked too inconsistent (light and dark depending on the grain and the particular wood slat) and different from the sample. We asked for a 2nd coat, but due to our builder being on vacation, he didn't get our message before the polyurethane went down. So now we have to either live with it or pay to have it sanded and restained (and the costs associated with delaying our closing by a week). It sounds from this thread like there are no quick fixes.

Hi Nate,

Just wondering with the paint technique you mentioned does it hide the grain of the wood? Did you top coat it with anything?

I am having a hard time staining my old pine floors, have tired many patches of different colors to only have them blotch up and look horrible. Is wood conditioner the answer? also what would be a good color to stain them that would make them look good. Any and all help would be appreciated.

i'll be sanding oak floors in two large rooms.
they each have a bit of dark staining from the previous owners. i've tried wood bleach last time, to no effect.
i'm hoping that by staining the floors dark, perhaps 'jacobean', that the stains will not be so obvious.

does anyone have experience with this?

Hi everyone, I am about to have my white oak floors re-finished, and I want a dark color. I was thinking of a ebony jacoboian mix. If anyone has attempted this and got it right, could you tell me what the mix % should be? And Pictures would really help. Thanks

We are starting from scratch, laying all new floors in our Adams Morgan, DC rowhouse and going for a dark expresso stain. Can anyone recommend a failproof plan including wood type, wood conditioner, stain, etc. to accomplish this? Obviously we will do a lot of testing before starting. Thank you and I promise to post a virtual house tour when our modern masterpiece is done!

I am an interior designer, and specify espresso/ebony floors all the time. Unfortunately it is extremely difficult to get done when refinishing a floor. With basically all woods, to avoid a zebra striped look, it is NOT a one coat stain process, it is a process of building up layers. If your refinisher has not done exactly what you want before with good success, odds are he will not be able to do it for you. Been there done that.