The Quick and Easy Way To Stain Wood Beams

worstontheblockMarch 1, 2021

Wood beams on your ceiling? LUCKY YOU!

Beams bring so much charm to a room. They create a sense of warmth, depth, and also draw your eye up, making the room seem both larger and more cozy at the same time.

They also really don’t go out of style, which is a wonderful thing, unless your beams are a 90’s orange or 2000’s bright red cherry and sticking out like a sore thumb.

I had this problem too.

Our beams had that bad orange tinge but also did not match the rest of the wood in the room. In fact, we had about four different wood finishes in our living room and it was making me crazy.

After whitewashing our fireplace and painting our moldings, the rest of the room was looking so good that I knew we had to do something with the beams.

The plan was to match them as closely as possible to the finish on the windows and the built-in book cases, which was a beautiful mohagony.

Staining the beams was, by far, the easiest part of finishing the living room and made a HUGE difference.

If you’re thinking about updating your beams, GO FOR IT. It’s a simple project that can be done in a day and will do so much for the overall feel of your space.

Follow along below for the simple steps to stain your wood beams, too.

1. Prepare

What you’ll need:

Painter’s tape
Wood stain (we used Minwax Mahogany)
paint stirrer
drop cloths/old sheets
dollar store table cloths (optional)
paint bucket
paint brush (optional)
old rags
step stool or ladder
Wood cleaner

Clear the room.

The first thing you’ll have to do is move any furniture out of the way so you can get your step stool safely under the beams (and avoid any stain dripping on your furniture).

If you are able to move the furniture to another room completely that would be ideal, so you won’t have to stop to move furniture between beams.

In our case with our smaller home, I just moved the furniture to one side of the room, stained those beams, and then moved the furniture to the other side to finish the room.

Do what works for you, grab help from a friend and always lift with your legs!

Clean your beams.

This is a great time to get up there and dust off any cobwebs and remove any dirt from your beams.

I love Murphy’s oil soap for my wood finishes. Just a quick “lick and a promise,” as mom says, and you’re good to go.

I definitely recommend doing this before staining, as that dirt can get caught up in the stain and make a mess.

And really, how often do we actually get up there to pay attention to our beams? Take advantage of the opportunity.

Protect your surfaces.

Place drop cloths down to protect your floors and cover any furniture still in the room. I love to use old sheets to cover my furniture as we are limited on those nice thick drop cloths.

Look around the room and consider anything nearby that might be in the “splash zone,” or close to where you’ll be working and walking with your bucket of stain.

Removing anything hanging on the walls (art, photos, etc.) is a great idea, as well as covering any built-ins.

We have three built-in bookcases in the living room. I covered one with an old sheet and the other two with plastic table cloths from the dollar store.

These table cloths are awesome for covering bookcases and protecting other surfaces for a few reasons:

They’re light weight and can be taped up easily
They’re inexpensive (dollar store!)
You don’t have to remove anything from your shelves. Just tape them up and you’re good to go!
They’re reuseable. Save and reuse them for future painting projects.

Please do not purchase these and throw them out after one use. I’ve had these two “dropcloths” for many years and they have been so helpful.

I digress…

We did not do anything else to the beams to prepare for the stain. No sanding, prepping– nothing.

Our beams had another stain color on it and I simply stained over it. When I say easy-I mean it!

And while you certainly can take hours stripping, sanding and conditioning your beams, I found it just wasn’t necessary.

Tape surrounding surfaces.

Protect your ceiling by placing painter’s tape adjacent to the beams.

Try to be as precise as possible and ensure it sticks well. Taking the time to tape well will decrease the chances of getting stain on your ceiling (and then having to fix it later).

Pay attention to the area where the beam meets your wall as well. Do you have intersecting moldings? Do the beams go straight to the wall? Put the tape right up along the beams, covering the area you do not want to get stain on.

IF you do get stain on the wall or ceiling, immediatly soak as much of it up with a paper towel by gently dabbing it. DON’T rub it in as this will make the area bigger. Just light dabs. You can paint over it later.

While this is not the clearest picture, you can see how the moldings were taped up. There’s tape around the beam on the ceiling as well. You can also see how the first finished beam matches the window so nicely.

Prepare your stain.

Follow the directions on the can. Give the stain a good mix with a paint stirrer and then pour some in your paint bucket.

I recommend not filling the bucket completely. Only put a minimal amount in. If you have a spill, the less stain you have in your bucket, the less you have to clean up.

2. Stain

Using an old rag or a paint brush, dip it into your bucket of stain and then wipe it onto the beam. Immediately take your rag and smooth the stain into the wood while wiping away any excess stain. This will ensure nothing drips and will give you a nice even finish.

Test your stain color first.

Test your stain on a small area which will go unnoticed to make sure it’s the right color before proceeding with staining the entire beam.

If you already have stain on your beams, the color that’s on the stain may look different when layered over the other stain color. Testing it in a small area will save you some heartache.

Use a rag.

This is just a recommendation; always do what works for you BUT I prefer to just use a rag for the entire staining process and ditch the paint brush.

Using a rag, you can smooth the stain on with one section of the rag and wipe it away with another.

As you go along your rag will become nicely saturated with stain and you’ll find it’s the perfect tool to both apply the stain evenly, wipe it into any crevices and remove the excess, without having to constantly switch tools.

I find this to be much easier than switching back and forth from brush to rag. A paint brush may also leave brush strokes and goes much slower than when just using a rag.

Stain one beam at at time.

Do not try to minimize the amount of times you have to move your ladder by staining two adjacent beams at once.

If you try to do this and the stain dries before you apply the next section, you’ll create an overlap and it will result in a patchy looking stain finish with some sections being darker than others.

Basically, some sections will end up with two coats while others just have one and it won’t look right.

By just completing one beam at a time, moving quickly but thoroughly, you’ll be able to move down and complete that entire beam while the stain is still wet in the adjacent area.

Continue staining.

Continue to move down each beam, moving your ladder as necessary, staining and wiping away excess until the entire beam is complete.

Take a break in between beams as needed. You don’t want to stop in the middle of one beam!

And just continue staining using the same process until the project is complete.

3. Clean up

While waiting for your stain to dry, you can clean up your tools.

If you have any stain left over you can put it in an old tupperware container and label it for future use.

Clean out your bucket with warm soapy water and your paint brush too if you used one.

Clean and wring out your rags. I usually throw them in the washing machine (with other old towels) after the initial clean to get out any leftover stain.

Once the stain is dry, you can remove your tape, moving carefully so as not to pull up any paint with it. Use a steady hand and pull the tape back onto itself as you remove it.

Here you start to get a peak of what the finished project is going to look like. Always very exciting!

Clear out any drop cloths, store your painting supplies, and you can start to put your room back together by moving the furniture back into place.

4. Enjoy the finished product!

Now that you’re room is back to normal it’s time to sit back, relax, enjoy and appreciate your (not-so-hard) work.

This was one of my favorite projects that made such a huge difference in the overall feel of our living room. It feels so cozy now and we love to relax in this space.

I hope that you love your new beams and the coziness they will bring to your space, too!