So, we did some work dye staining a floor with Sherwin Williams dye stain concentrate ( black ) because the customer did not like the variation in color due to the grain ( red oak ). She wanted a dark floor, we could have just as well painted it for what it was.

We resanded and dyed the floor black and then went over it with coffee brown quick coat dura seal penetrating stain. The next day I went to put finish on it and we decided to use water based poly to keep the job on schedule. Well, within seconds we started having issues. The poly turned black, the finish coagulated and I stopped work.

A call to the manufacturer of the poly quickly educated me on the dangers of using dye stains. Apparently water reduced stains really like water, and the dye that hadn't pulled into the wood completely was thirsty for more water and literally sucked it out of my finish, causing a rapid drying of the finish on a molecular level causing it to start to coagulate. Okay, so no water based finish on a water reduction dye stain. We switched to oil.

After wiping the entire floor down with wet rags to help remove the excess Dye ( apparently we needed to have reduced it more than we had ), we rolled on a coat of oil poly. I was worried that the dye would draw up into the oil as well, since a test spot under the cabinets proved such a thing would happen just from a small amount of brushing.

I hadn't gotten the entire floor wiped down evenly as all the trim and cabinets were in place and white! , so there was a line around the floor in spaced where it was black, and the wiped off area had a bronzed look to it. I wasn't worried too much, as the test sample turned the same black on the wiped area as well as the untouched area.

However, as we started to apply the finish, it wasn't turning black everywhere like the day before! Thinking I had ruined the job, we finished and left..dreading a return visit for the next coat.

To my surprise, the entire floor was black as night. To my disdain, a couple of days later, we get a call from the contractor about the finish failing. Frog tape had pulled it right off, and movers blankets on the floor for half a day had broken adhesion in spots that looked like someone had overheated the finish with a heat gun and it had bubbled.

Doing some research, I found that this dye stain has an incredibly high surface tension, which would explain why the oil based finish was failing so fast.

The question then becomes...how do you either dye stain a floor and remove the adhesion issue, or what product will stain a floor almost like you painted it?

We are getting requests to recreate colors on floors that our typical penetrating stains will not accomplish, and we've had bad luck using wiping stains with adhesion issues in the past as well.

Use General finishes dyes/products including their topcoats.

also glitza makes a black stain that is opaque and even..

dyes have been used on woodwork/musical instruments for a long time..with topcoats of various finishes applied.

OI sense you simply didn't give enough dry time or had excess product left over on surface.

is possible you over applied trying to compensate for and achieve what your customer wanted?

Oh, I'll agree we put down too much dye as evidenced by the amount that came up the next day on the rags, and subsequently the dye that came up on my wetted finger 2 days later when I went out to look at the bad adhesion.

To make a floor transparent black, you generally would want to use a water based black stain. At one point , I was using country colors black stain. It worked very well and dried very quickly.

I also did a floor with a decorative painter where he used two coats of watered down black latex paint. To my surprise it came out very much identical to when I use a water based stain.

The only benefits to using water based stains are the quick dry time and the more even coloring of the wood grain because the water based stains pop the grain.