We Are Working With What Nature Provided

There are many ways to add colour and character to wooden furniture. All have their places and virtues, but for us, none quite hits the mark. Paint turns wood into a canvas, hiding the grain and applying colour as a surface finish. Oils and waxes can produce beautiful results, but they don’t offer much protection and need regular renewing. And while shellac, used in traditional French polishing, produces a finish unequalled in its warmth and high gloss, it’s sensitive to heat and moisture and is time-consuming and complex to achieve.

At ercol, we make products that are durable, honest and allow the wood’s true character to shine through. And for furniture that needs to put up with the rough-and-tumble of daily life over many years, time has shown that the best technique is staining. 

Stains add colour without concealing, becoming an integral part of the wood rather than a coating on top. The process is part science, part art and crucially, in the hands of a skilled polisher, stains can reveal the full character, complexity and beauty of the timber like nothing else. 

Historically, like most of the industry, we used solvent-based stains, which are slower to dry and easier to work with. That changed in 2002, when we moved to our present factory in Princes Risborough, where the open-plan layout meant we simply couldn’t use solvent-based products safely at the required scale. The only alternative was water-based, but that presented a significant challenge for the simple reason that wood and water don't mix. Changing our processes took time and care, but today, all the stains we use are water-based. They’re non-toxic, so better for our people and for the environment, and our extracted spray booths allow us to use them safely even in an open-plan setting.

Unlike paint, which sits on the surface, stain penetrates the wood to a depth of one to two millimetres. This means the colour becomes part of the wood itself, so you can see through it to the grain beneath. It also moves with the timber rather than cracking at the joints, and won't be damaged by the knocks and scrapes of day-to-day life.

We generally apply stains using air-powered spray guns, which give a faster, more even application than hand-finishing alone. But the human hand and eye remain essential. Too much stain and the wood becomes waterlogged: some soaks in, while the rest sits on the surface and is wasted. The skill of the polisher is in knowing how long to leave it  -  normally around 60 seconds - and when to wipe off the excess, this varies on the colour required.

Our craftspeople also understand that different timbers respond in their own ways. Beech is open-grained and thirsty, soaking up stain like a sponge. Ash, which is finer and lighter, requires more careful working, with the stain wiped into lighter areas and lifted from darker ones to achieve an even finish. Within a single piece of timber from the same species, different areas will absorb stain at different rates. 
 

After staining, the furniture is gently dried in a drying tunnel, reducing the drying time from about an hour to a more commercially viable 8-10 minutes. But while we can speed up that part of the process, there’s no substitute for experience gained over many years in bringing out wood’s true beauty.