I hear you. We just had a fence put in, and I want to stain it. A medium dark brown, without too much red, but not gray looking... I've got 5 quarts and three sample size stains, and so far nothing is exactly right.

We had our yard fenced when we moved in this January. It is made of pressure treated pine. Our HOA "requires" that it be stained by May 1 (even though you'll see that our neighbors that we adjoined to isn't stained or hasn't been in years). We do agree though that it would look better stained to tone it down a little as it really does stick out from the whole neighborhood aesthetic. Questions: 1. We are thinking a semi-transparent stain to provide a bit more longevity than transparent. Will we regret not seeing as much of the wood grain? 2. Should we stain only our new portions of the fence? Or ask permission from the neighbors to stain the side of their fences in our yard that we adjoined to? 3. Looking at the color "pewter" by Behr. This would be trying To match the aged fenced around us. Any experiences with their fence/deck stains?Other product suggestions? We would prefer to spray it instead of roll it, but could do either. 4. Feel free to give landscaping ideas on this yard. The ivy has to go, just don't know what I want to do instead since I'm not sure we will ever be able to have grass back there with so much shade.

It’s really subjective ... personal taste. And hard to say with no context — your house color, the yard around it, your decor likes, etc. So many directions you could go with this. I think doing the posts in a darker stain and fence panels/deck in lighter stain would look nice. I also like the idea of multi-colored stain for the deck part only, but it could look busy. If you consider it, then I’d pick one color from your multi, for the fencing. Hopefully, someone who can do color mock-ups sees this. If not, you might want to try Sherwin Williams, Benjamin Moore, etc, and see if they could do some color mock-ups for you. This is a big job, I’d just want to get a good visual idea before starting. It’s beautiful work already — hope you update us, I’d like to see how it all turns out. :) Dark with light accents ... not what I’d choose with as much wood as you have there.

Love that SW raisin! The cedar on the siding stain and deck would look great as long as it is opaque enough to cover what it already in existence. The paint experts at your local SW store could recommend the right products. Good job!