Staining wood shelves

Occasionally folks ask about staining our U-Paint MDF shelves. The short answer is yes, it can be done, but are you sure that is the look you're going for?

The MDF shelves are intended to be painted. There is maple on the edge of our MDF shelves, so if you go ahead and apply stain you’ll have stained maple on the edges. Now the MDF on the top and bottom when you stain that material the result will be more like stained brown paper.

In order to match up to some existing piece of woodwork naturally you want to start with the same kind of wood. We offer all of our wood choices in unfinished raw wood. 

In the case you don't have anything to match up to its just a look you have in mind, then choose a wood that is already going the right direction. Maple has basically no texture, is smooth and very whitish blonde in color so a lot of times is chosen for staining however maple doesn't always cooperate with being stained. It can resist taking on the color because its so tight to begin with. Both red and white oak accept stain readily and have a very strong grain pattern. Red oak as a pinkish tint whereas white oak is more brownish.  Mahogany is only slightly textured and takes stain easily though its starting out pretty dark and reddish brown to begin with so only works for darker stain colors.

 Your best bet is to experiment with your stain. We offer finish samples of any of our wood types, which, all of those have a topcoat already and will not take stain. (But what you can do is put in the note section at checkout request unfinished samples) to test your stain with. 

We also offer custom stain matching service