Still think midnights a bad time to stain wood? I had a different result last night

Everyone always says dont stain wood after dark because you cant see the color right. I was out on my back deck in Carmel around 1am doing a cedar fence picket repair. I used a headlamp and a regular work light and honestly the even coverage I got was better than any daytime job Ive done. The light from the lamp showed me every drip and uneven spot because it hit at an angle. Has anyone else tried night staining and stuck with it or was my late night just a fluke?

2 comments

2 Comments

chen.james25d ago

Gotta push back on this one. The headlamp trick gives you a false sense of control cause it highlights the wet spots but it hides the actual color shift once the stain dries. I messed up a fence panel last summer doing the same thing around midnight and the next morning it looked blotchy and way darker than I thought. Natural daylight shows you the real tone and how the wood soaks it in differently across the grain. The even coverage you think you got is probably just from the light hitting at a sharp angle and hiding the streaks. Your eye adjusts to the workspace light but your brain doesnt register how the color actually looks outside that beam. Give it a full day of sun and check again tomorrow.

amyr5723d ago

That line about "your eye adjusts to the workspace light" is spot on. My buddy Mark did the same thing on his shed doors with a headlamp and swore it looked perfect until the next afternoon when it looked like a patchy mess.