I am planning to use MDF for all of my trim work in a basement finish project. I was wondering if anyone has used colored stain on MDF before and if so how did the process work for you. I am looking to avoid the painted look and get down to a more textured look of the MDF. I was also wondering about pigment paint and if that product might work. Joe
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id say experiment. MDF is cheap. Avoid water based stains, gels, pigments as they will give MDF problems.
Youll probably end up having to use glazes and more a "faux" type finish approach then the traditional stain but who knows. UNless youre milling the MDF yourself or special ordering most of it comes pre primed with paint.
Good luck
Yuk!!! I cant see MDF looking to good stained.
You are talking a faux finish. The base coat should be an alkyd base, and the glaze can be either alkyd or acrylic, depending on the detail and size of the work. While you may want to get to a textured look of the mdf, (whatever that means), you need to sand the basecoat as smooth as you can so that you can grain the topcoat with some sort of success. The basecoat must be sanded and seal any fillers, so two coats would not surprise me.
It can be done, but the quality of the result is dependant on your skill.
While you can get some interesting effects on particle board and OSB with bright dyes (red, green, blue, yellow, ...), it just doesn't look good on MDF, so probably stain won't be any better. But give it a try - who knows ?
PS Some people use, and presumably like, vinyl covered MDF (comes in oak and pine I think).
Phill Giles
The Unionville Woodwright
Unionville, Ontario
why?, sounds like staining cardboard.
"why?, sounds like staining cardboard."
Ha, you had to ask why, and it is just like staining cardboard. If you ask me, mdf trim always looks like crap, but you can make it look like stained crap as easy as painting it.
carboard has different density then MDF. MDF has a binding agent while cardboard uses it own fibers more or less for the binding action.
Mdf holds stain. Try some pieces first. Lots of millwork in retail stores is stained or laquerd mdf. I've even seen laquerd osb. They use these materials for different looks and they are cheaper.
Ace