Coloring Wood Using Natural Dyes

Use these natural dye recipes, which use crystals, ferrous sulfate and extracts, to make your woodworking shine.

By Brian Miller and Marci Crestani
Published on December 27, 2017
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by AdobeStock/sayayute

No doubt woodworkers were inspired centuries ago to try coloring their wood with natural dyes after observing the range of hues they imparted on fabrics. We tend to think of natural dyes as coming from plants, but of the four most popular dyes used to color wood nowadays, two of them, brazilwood extract and logwood extract, are derived from the heartwood of trees, one is derived from the husk of a nut or from peat (walnut crystals) and the fourth, cochineal, is actually a bug.

Like chemicals, natural dyes get a color boost from tannic acid. Unlike chemicals, however, they will still deposit a more colorful shading (as opposed to the weathered effect of chemicals) on wood that does not contain tannins.

The main advantage that natural dyes have over synthetic dyes is that they are more light fast when used in conjunction with a mordant. So before you get too excited about the prospect of coloring your wood in a more natural way than using chemicals, let us explain the concept of mordants.

The word “mordant” comes from the Middle French word “morder” which means “to bite.”

A mordant is the fixer that helps the natural dye’s color bite more firmly into the wood’s fibers…or you could say, the mordant binds the color to the fibers. Chemicals are the mordants for natural dyes. The most common chemicals used as mordants are potassium dichromate, ferrous sulfate and alum. If you want to use a less toxic chemical as a mordant, try sodium carbonate and see if you like the results. Mordants are not essential for all natural dyes, as you will see in two of the following recipes (brazilwood and walnut crystals).

When chemicals are used as a mordant with natural dyes, tannins are not essential. Chemicals will still bind the natural dye to the wood even if the wood does not contain tannins.

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