Dive Deeper Into Stain Colors w/ Caleb Roth (Stain & Seal Experts) | Fence Armor

What stain color should I use? That's the question we get all the time. This is Caleb Roth with Stain & Seal Experts fence and deck stain and today I'm going to talk to you about stain and sealers and their colors and we're going to get into some of the details, some of the nerdy stuff about what makes up a stain, so let's get started. Okay guys so what makes a stain last, that's probably one of the most important things we're going to talk about when it comes to color uh choices so the more pigmentation you have obviously the longer the stain is going to last so we should expect a clear sealer to not last as long as something like this Mahogany stain here. So I'm just going to start from the top and I'm going to talk about each one of the stain and sealer colors that we offer and what considerations you should have in mind when you're picking this color for your project. So I'm going to start off with with the fact that we offer 18 colors, anything from clears to solids to semi-transparent, semi-solids and transparent colors, we’ve got all of them. The first thing right here this is the clear this top we call this wet look clear this is really beautiful on brand new cedar, brand new pine, brand new redwood, whatever you're using it on and it's a great water sealer and it has some UV protection but it's not that much. Most clear sealers on the marketplace today are going to last between 12 uh and 16 months something like that it's something you need to redo every year uh to a year and a half it's just a good maintenance recommendation we don’t usually recommend the clear just because of that reason because we try to give our customers something that's going to give you the most longevity. So now we'll move into our transparent colors, these two right here um this one's called Light Honey and this one's called Cedar Tone these are both great colors they look fantastic on new wood they're probably two of our most popular colors, unfortunately these colors what they have in beauty they lack some of the longevity and the reason is, is there's just not as much pigmentation in those and you're gaining the beauty of the wood you're gaining all of those those fine details of the wood by using a very clear transparent color but you just don't get the long life because there's not as much pigment. What we try to do is generally we're going to recommend most people for most projects go with these semi-transparent colors and they start here these are the names Pecan, Redwood, Mahogany, Chestnut, Walnut. We've even got the Black here that you see on the background these semi-transparents have a ton of pigment, there's a lot of pigment a lot of color they still allow the wood grain to pop because they're transparent pigment so it's a transoxide pigmentation system so you still get all the benefits of the transparent stain where you can see through and see all the wood but you don't have the short lifespan. You can expect anywhere from three to five years out of these colors they hold up very well so if you've got a brand new fence or even a fence with a couple years of age on it these are a great choice for any projects for fences, decks, siding, things like that, so keep those in mind we're going to skip this bottom one here and we're going to come back to it. Our next color lineup is going to be our semi-solid colors, semi-solids we use an opaque pigment system so basically the pigmentation you cannot see through this but we use it different than paint but similar. So I'm going to get into that so these are all penetrating stains they go into the wood not on the wood but these semi-solids still do a really good job of covering things up so if you've got an old fence and old deck they work great and if you're mix matching boards they work great for that too or if you've got a brand new fence and you just really like one of these, one of these colors perfectly fine you can definitely do that. So I'll get started with the Palomino this Palomino is a great color it's a brown with a yellow tone and it works really good it's one of our it's one of our favorite colors here in house it's not very popular because it's yellow but it's a great color, I would recommend that to anybody who likes yellows, wants a brown without red to it. So next we have our Auburn this is a really good color also works good it's really popular out West you see it in quite a few places and again great for older fences, older decks, if you like that reddish orange look it's really the color of like Georgia clay. So Sable and Chocolate these are both, these are our top semi-solid colors they're really great basically milk chocolate and dark chocolate is a good way to think of it but they're great colors, they're very popular, they're dark, this Chocolate is a lot darker than most of the dark browns on the market today so it works really well with new modern construction with a lot of the downspouts and gutters and the trim on homes getting really dark and bronze kind of colors, this is a perfect match for that. It works really well our grays, we have four Gray colors available. These are for fence stains only we don't make them for deck stains because we put a lot of pigment in there and we can go down a rabbit hole about that but grays just typically are just kind of weird on decks sometimes so, so we we don't do that. Cape Cod gray, slate gray, Eucalyptus has a bit of green to it and then this barn wood color has got a little bit of a brown to it, it works well. So what we did with our grays is we wanted a grey that would work both with blacks, whites and blues but also work with golds and browns and reds and things like that so you'll notice that these these are really not that blue so you don't have the blue in it it's more of a gold uh a gold base in there I know that doesn't make sense but it's there and when you see it up next to a brown you'll notice it. So, so our greys tend to work with either blacks or brown so they're a good choice depending on your siding, you know you've got all these choices but there's that and last but not least we have these solid colors. These are water-based solid colors where everything else that we offer is an oil base. This is uh Russet Brown and this is Court Open Brown, these are for old ugly fences simply put if you've got a super old fence that looks bad. You've mixed match boards you've done a restoration on it and it's just an old fence on its last leg but you want to get a few more years think about these they work great they're a solid color so there's no, you're not going to see through it so it's going to cover up anything that you're working with just like a paint does so maybe that helps making your choice. A lot of people are in this range right here, a lot of people love this range so take those things into consideration we ask you to please like our page, share it, subscribe, hit the little bell button there and subscribe. If you've got any questions contact us there and if you want to get some of these fence and deck stains for your projects don't hesitate to give us a call, thanks.