How to Select Paint, Stain & Varnish

Video Transcript

"Hey hi I'm Tim Gipson and I'm going to talk to you about how to select paint, stain or varnish. Now there's many things that we have to take into consideration it really depends on what type of project that you are doing when you get into the selection process. So we go through a process of elimination. First thing is when you are dealing with paints or stains is your application in interior project or an exterior project. Your paints and stains in particularly your urethanes and varnishes are formulated for an interior use and exterior use. And that depends on whether it's going to be exposed to elements or how much sun exposure it's going to have or how much wear and tear it's going to take. So that is one of your biggest considerations is whether you are going to be doing interior or exterior and you want to make sure you choose the correct paint, stain, or varnish for that application. And the next thing if we look at paints we want to look at there's different types of finishes that we can get. So we have a very low sheen, with everything from a flat which is a good hiding paint, all the way up to a semi gloss to a gloss which provides you a higher sheen but it's also for accent pieces. But keep in mind the higher the sheen on your paint, the more imperfections it will show. So typically you use those semi gloss or a gloss on areas such as trim which is an accent and then your walls you use more of a flat or a at least an eggshell or a satin finish depending on the durability you want. When you look at your stains, now when you look at your stain there's two different types of stains you can get. You can get a what we call a translucent stain or a semi translucent or even an opaque stain. So I guess really there's three. But you want to choose your stains based on whether you want your wood grain to show or whether you want to hide your wood grain. So with your higher quality woods, hardwoods such as oak and mahogany and cherry where you really want the stain to show then you are going to choose a stain that is formulated for that. And also they have some particular colors. But really when you get into staining, you have to use some test pieces because all wood stain just a little bit differently and whatever you see on the can will be a representation. But you can get the stain in a water base or an oil base, for more durability and for really for better penetrating finish and colors the oil based stain is going to be a little bit better to work with. And also it actually dries a little bit quicker. I'm Tim Gipson and that's some tips on how to choose paint, stain and varnish."