I found it incredibly frustrating trying to find a pre-made stain with the undertone I wanted.
Take your sample, spend the extra money and get a custom wood stain. (I used Benjamin Moore)
You can work with them and get the perfect undertone. Make sure you see it with the finished clear coat on.

If that is a pc of plywood you are attempting to use for samples, don't. Get a piece of real oak, preferable a tread. Are you doing this yourself? The wood needs to be prepper properly for the stain to look correct as well. Next get Duraseal Stain at the least, stay away from MInwax or Varathane stains for flooring (yes stair trads are flooring and need to be finished similarly).

Hello Millwork man! Why Duraseal over the others?

Try varathane aged wheat it does lean to the green side

Duraseal is more of a professional finish for floors. Varathane and Minwax are homeowner quality and not as good a product overall. And then are much better stains and products than Duraseal as well but at least Duraseal is a professional product.

Minardi, I dont expect to take the red out..I just want to tone it down. Im not asking how to bleach or make it even like white oak. Thanks for you insight though.

You will never tone that to be anything other than red. That doesn't even look like the original stain was sanded out of the material. It is redder than most raw red oak. It will stay that way.

Looking further at that flooring behind the plywood stain sample, I do not even believe that that flooring is Red Oak.

thats my pine floor.

" thats my pine floor. "

OK good. Still I would definitely get a piece of oak tread and use that for your stain samples. Plywood will not look like solid oak.

Add some green to the stain, it should calm down some of the pink undertone

can you just add green paint tho? Doesnt it need to be green oil bases stain? (green stain is impossible to find)

With the depth of color you seem to be looking to achieve, any attempt to minimize the red tones will be severely limited. You are applying something almost clear, so any greenish tinting it may have will not be effective at hiding all that red. There are a few ways I can think of, but some may turn out darker than you desire.

You can use Duraseal natural/neutral stain, tinted with Transtint Dye or DS Coffee or Ebony. Applying it over water popped wood will make it deeper and more uniform.

Over that you can use oil poly tinted with Ebony, or WB finish tinted with Transtint Dye. Putting too much tint in the clearcoat can lead to imperfections. Once you like the color, add a final clear coat.

https://homesteadfinishingproducts.com/transtint-liquid-dyes/

I'd try a pure green transtint dye. Pigment based oil stains are great for doing a contrasting grain fill on sealed wood but horrendous at everything else, especially on raw wood.

My first advice would be simply to embrace the color of the wood you have, or choose a wood that's going to give you the right color without a lot of futzing around.

When looking for a particular color while finishing wood it is absolutely critical to go through the entire finishing schedule on the samples. That means matching the wood as closely as possible, sanding through the exact sequence you intend to use without skipping any steps, apply fillers, dyes, stains, glazes, finishes, and toners exactly as you intend to use them with any sanding steps between coats. (If you don't klnow what all of those things are and how to use them please get Jeff Jewitt or Bob Flexner's books on wood finishing before you go any further!) If you do not do the full finishing schedule on your samples you are doomed to seriously bad surprises at the end, and even that is no guarantee-- which is why picking wood that is the color you want and applying a simple clear finish will save you a lot of grief

Thank you but unfortunately we didn't choose this wood and so here I am. Not trying to remove just reduce the redness.

"Brown" is a mixture of red and green. The simple rule is if it's too red add green, if too green add red. You can most readily do that with a dye at the beginning or with a toner at the end of the finishing process. If you don't want the wood significantly darker then don't add mixtures of red and green--eg browns.

Latte Machiatto by Berger Seidel

Look at Bona's Red out (I think that's the name) - it has a green tint and is used prior to finishing wood. Also, Ciranova has Pink Blocker - it's a two part system. I tried it on a solid red oak board - and it removed the pink.

@Rebecca Armstrong in exchange for having your question answered I believe it is fair you make a contribution to our forum by answering mine.

The way to push red (actually orange in this case) toward green while preserving as much translucency as possible is to add blue tint. Orange is a mixture of red and yellow. Green is a mixture of blue and yellow. Adding green will add additional yellow thereby requiring a greater quantity of tint before arriving at desired depth of green. Every drop of tint added causes stain to be more opaque, thereby masking grain of wood.

You came here to learn how to stain wood, I come here to help and in exchange learn what motivates people in their pursuits. I use what I learn here to train workforce on responding to real life customers (mind reading if you please).

Why did you come here to have us tell you what you need to tell the paint store instead of giving paint store one of your treads along with a piece of wood exactly like you want yours to look? No human is capable of conveying colors they are visualizing to a second human. Not convinced? Pick an item of any color other than "pure" and without showing them the item, hand your home decorator friend a color fan, using words only and not pointing to similar item describe the color as you visualize it and ask you friend to choose it from the fan. Based on your success, how do you think it would work if you described it to one friend who translated what you said to a second friend? Give a paint store clerk an item of color you want and he will mix a near match first try.

Credit to dani_m08. Bona Red Out is a great idea. It's far less complicated than a tinted stain or finish.

• Bona Red Out
• Bona DriFast Stains
• Bona Floor Finishes