How to Stain Wood with Coffee

This is a tutorial on how to stain wood naturally with non-toxic products.

If you’ve ever shopped for wood sign blanks, you’ll realize it is a lot cheaper to buy the unfinished wood blanks that are not stained.

Not that it is that much hassle and work to stain wood, it’s more I don’t really want to deal with toxic chemicals found in most wood stains and getting it everywhere.

I found a way to stain wood with natural products like coffee and non-toxic products like acrylic paint that produces similar effects without all the toxic drawbacks.

Materials for Staining Wood with Coffee and Other Non-toxic Paints

Unfinished wood blanks – This works best with lighter woods like birch or basswood. Here are a few different shapes I like:

Horizonal wood blank variety pack

Rectangle blanks

Blank Rounds

Coffee grounds – any coffee grounds works for this whether its instant coffee or decaf.

Acrylic paint – I also used a couple of colors from this variety set I have. The benefit of using acrylic is you have wider range in colors and depth.

Sponge Brush – I found the sponge brush worked best for application.

How to darken wood without stain

My preferred method between the two is actually to use acrylic. I have more variation in colors and more control over how dark I want to make the stain.

How to make colored wood stain with acrylic paint

Since there is much more variation in color and darkness, you might want to do a test run with your acrylic paint on a smaller scrap piece of wood or on the backside of the sign blank.

First dilute your paint with a 1:1 ratio of paint to water. For slightly darker stain, use less water. You just need to get it to a more runny consistency.

There is no need to prep your wood. I just take the sponge brush and paint the solution on the wood directly.

Apply a layer of the solution and then wipe off the excess with a paper towel.

I actually mixed a bit of gray and brown together to get a more smokey look.

How to stain wood with coffee

The process for staining wood with coffee is very similar to the process for staining with acrylic.

First make a concentrated version of your normal coffee. Here I just use some used grinds from a nespresso pod I already used this morning for my coffee. I just added some additional hot water.

Simple paint this solution onto your wood and wipe the excess off with a paper towel.

DIY non toxic wood stain tips

Some people complain about the edges soaking up excess stain but I didn’t really have that much trouble with this. As long as you wipe up the excess liquid promptly, there is not much edge absorption.

For a deeper stain, apply a couple of extra layers. I find there is not much difference after 3 layers though.

Place your stained sign in a well ventilated area for faster drying. It took only a couple of hours for mine to dry next to the window.

The best part is, because you are using all non-toxic stains, you don’t need to worry about inhales the fumes while it is drying.