Correcting the Color of a Wood Stain

My floor finisher used the wrong stain on my newly sanded oak floors, making the color much more ORANGE than I wanted; it was supposed to be more red, like cherry wood, in tone. This seems to mean the stain has too much YELLOW in it. We still have to put down another coat of stain and a sealer. I want to know if I can have the sealer tinted slightly in order to neutralize the orange tone.

If that is possible, I need advice on what color to choose to neutralize the orange/too-yellow color. Using the color wheel, my strategy would be to choose the color that is OPPOSITE the color I am trying to neutralize. However, because stain is translucent, I am not sure whether I should be using the pigment-color wheel or the light-color wheel. On the pigment color wheel, the OPPOSITE OF ORANGE IS BLUE, but the OPPOSITE OF YELLOW IS MAGENTA. On the light color wheel, there is no orange, and the OPPOSITE OF YELLOW LIGHT IS BLUE.

Answer

Unfortunately, the amount of color you'd have to apply to affect a change would start to obscure the wood grain...yellows and reds are the hardest to change, or cover, and it's likely your floor has a natural yellowish tone just from the wood....tinting a sealer, or 'toning' as it's called, would not be recommended on a floor as well. It's almost impossible to apply it without lap marks and other issues, (one reason why they're sprayed on, typically in the furniture/cabinet industry), and anywhere the floor got scratched over time would likely remove the 'toning' exposing the yellower tone underneath, making the floor look bad prematurely.Your assumption is correct as far as the color wheel, and in the furniture industry there is such a thing as a blue toner, used to cut down the orange spectrum, but this type of use would not be appropriate for a floor, and it's a very subtle toner that's sprayed on in a lacquer based finishing schedule. Any staining/coloration needs to be done at the wood level on a floor, and of course this begs the question, why didn't they do a sample?? This is SO important, and yet it's still such a common complaint. Anyone who purports to be a Professional should know better than to stain the whole floor the wrong color.....without the customers approval. White Oak has a natural yellowish tone that's augmented by a oil stain and solvent based floor finish,which ambers it even more,(something that also has to be taken into account when figuring the final color),Red Oak can have a more pinkish hue, and a waterborne finish is what's called 'water white' meaning that it's very clear, not yellow/amber. Oak is also quite a hard wood, and therefore oil stains, especially in their new formulations (reformulated by Government decree to severely cut down on V.O.C.'s, the solvents that help a stain penetrate), will tend to not penetrate well.While I don't know what brand of stain he used, many of these guys use Minwax stains which are among the worst in my opinion. Even though they control such a large market share, their products are quite poor when compared to other, more professional products...especially on hard woods.The Minwax Gel stains are in a polyurethane base, and have better color strength, and when used in multiple coats can achieve better 'toning' type results, but they can be trickier to apply evenly on a large floor. In my opinion, you need to arrive at a suitable color with the stain, and you may not be able to get Oak to look like Cherry, with no amber/yellowish hue...it's just the nature of the materials....the same reason you couldn't make Cherry look like White Oak. Some pre-finished Oak flooring can achieve these colors because the coloring and finishing is done in a factory setting where it can be closely controlled, and other techniques can be used under this type of control...each board is finished like a piece of furniture or cabinetry, where they can utilize dyes, toners, and the latest high tech catalyzed clear coat technology....not possible when finishing a whole floor in it's entirety on site...wish I had a better answer, but hopefully you can arrive at a pleasing result with your Contractor, but it is a shame that he applied stain to the whole floor that you didn't like.