Do you want to get rid of the orange cedar tone on your deck or fence? Here are some tips for staining a deck darker to a deeper, more rich tone.

Once spring hits and the weather starts getting nicer, everyone is itching to get outside to enjoy the outdoors. However, to enjoy our outdoor spaces, we have to do a little spring cleaning first, and sometimes even more intensive jobs like staining a deck or fence. Ugh! That is a job I do not care for. We have done a fair share of staining over the years so I wanted to share some tips for staining a deck that we have found make it easier and more effective for longer lasting color… that equals less work for you! 🙂

The last time we stained our deck and fence, I decided to change up the color. I was tired of looking at the orange cedar tone that didn’t even look good with our house color. Truthfully, it wasn’t something I really thought about previously. We just kept going with the color that was on there when we bought the house. Well guess what? You don’t have to!

Our fence usually held up well, needing a staining about every 3 years but the deck was more often than that. The combination of the foot traffic, sun beating down on it and the harsh winters, it lasted 2 years at the most. The only area that stayed looking fairly good was the covered portion of the deck so we did not have to stain that every time.

However, this made for another annoyance to me in that when the house was built, the deck was originally stained with a solid stain that is almost like painting on color. I am not sure if the part of the deck that extends into the yard was added later or if over the years, the solid stain faded off the exposed portion of the deck but not so much on the covered portion. Whichever it was, it left us with two different colors of stain.

Whenever we stained the covered portion with the cedar tone semi-solid stain, it would not completely change the color of the boards since it was a lighter color. My hope was that a darker color would cover and make both deck portions uniform and look like one deck.  

I bought a couple different colors of stain to try on the back side of our fence in an area that does not get seen a lot. We have a lot of fence and deck to cover so I wanted to get the color right before buying three 5 gallon buckets of stain!

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After trying out the samples, the clear choice to me was the darker of the two. It was such a deep, rich tone of brown and I loved it! It had no problem covering the orange color. We got the stain at Menards and it was called Pittsburgh Ultra Advanced semi-transparent stain in Oxford Brown. Next we applied the stain to a small section on the deck just to test it on there. Still looking good! Now we were set to stain!

Tip # 1: Lightly sand the deck surfaces.

My first tip when staining your deck is to lightly sand the top surfaces with a sander. We used a sander pad attached to a pole as shown in the picture below. Now I am not saying to sand the color off completely, just give it light sanding to take off any chipping stain and smooth down any rough surfaces. This will give the stain a chance to soak in better. We did NOT sand the fence, only the deck as there are not any top surfaces to the fence. 

Tip #2: Clean the surfaces you are going to stain.

We pressure washed the deck and fence prior to staining. This makes sure you are working with a clean surface and not trying to stain over a layer of dirt. Again you are not trying to take color off the wood using the pressure washer, this is just for cleaning. Make sure you don’t use too high of a pressure as your wood can get beat up by the pressure washer.

While we were at it, it was a perfect time to clean the siding under the covered portion of our deck. We did not want to risk ruining the siding with the pressure washer so we used a small soft bristle scrub brush with soapy water to wash the walls. It is amazing how dirty they get under there! It is hard to notice until they are clean! Ha!

Tip #3: Mask off any areas next to your house.

Our deck is right next to the house and so it was inevitable that we would splatter stain on the siding if we tried to stain without covering the house. Let’s just say the previous owners were not as careful about it. There was evidence of that on the house already and we did not want to add to it. We taped up some plastic drop cloths around corners next to the fence and used thin pieces of cardboard in tight spots.

Tip #4: Use a wide 6 inch stain brush with natural bristles

Let me repeat this… use a wide natural bristle stain brush! We have tried every possible way you can to stain the deck and fence. This includes spraying it, which was way too messy and wasteful. We tried rolling it, which didn’t get into the grooves of the wood at all. We have even tried regular paint brushes which are good for some smaller areas like railings or lattice. However for the big deck and fence boards, use this kind of natural bristled brush. 

I don’t know what it is about the natural bristles but they hold the stain in the bristles really well until you go to apply it on the board and it gets in ALL the grooves. Our fence has some really worn areas and these brushes are great with coverage. Thankfully it covers in one coat because there is a lot of fence and deck to cover! The brushes are kinda spendy for one brush but they are so worth it! We clean up the brushes with soapy water afterwards and keep them to reuse every time. 

The only time I had a little hesitation with the color is when we stained the first section on the fence. This is on the shady side and man did it look dark! I was a little nervous after this. 🙂

But we forged ahead and I am glad we did. When the sun hits it, it is a gorgeous color!

Here are some pictures in progress as we finished the deck minus the lattice and under the stairs.

Tip #5: Use a darker color for longer lasting stain

What do you think? Doesn’t it look better than the orange tone with the house color? I was very happy with the results. It did the job of covering the solid stain on the covered portion of the deck so the whole deck looks uniform now! Yay! And guess what, this color has lasted longer! The only portion we had to touch up was the top boards of the exposed deck in 2 years. I can’t give you a timeline on the fence as we have moved. My guess is we would have been able to get 4 years out of the fence with this darker color.

Here are some pictures a couple years later right before we moved. As you can see, the color is still going strong!

We also did the small porch on the front of the house. Here are some before and after pictures of that. Some other changes we have made to the front of the house include taking out the ugly juniper bushes and planting hydrangeas, painting the garage doors, making DIY craftsman style shutters and adding a fun interchangeable porch sign. 

Well, have I convinced you on trying a darker stain yet? 🙂 I feel like I should give you a forewarning though, just like when dying your hair, it is much easier to go to a darker color than back to a lighter color. Ha! So make sure it is really what you want to do before pulling the trigger. My thought on it was, if I hated it, we would wait for it to fade and sand off some of the dark to apply a lighter color. Thankfully that did not have to happen! I will be back soon with more sprucing up of our patio area to share with you.