Our Ultimate Guide To Restoring Faded Wood Furniture
Over time, our wooden furniture can become scratched, faded and stained from coffee cups and wear, but this doesn’t mean you have to throw away your wood furniture.
Wooden furniture can be restored with a few simple tricks such as cleaning and sanding, you can also try some homemade remedies such as oil and mayonnaise to bring your furniture back to life.
To help you with bringing your old wooden furniture back to life, we’ve listed our best how-to methods and tips for dealing with faded wood down below.
Why Does Wooden Furniture Fade From The Sun?
Before we get into how to fix your faded type of wood furniture we should first of all address why actual wood can fade, to begin with, whether we’re talking hardwood floors or a wooden table.
Fading over some time on wood happens due to three factors from the sun; UV light, visible light and infrared light. UV has the biggest impact on a piece of wood with exotic woods, in particular, becoming bleached faster than domestic woods.
As well as the type of wood, the type of finish can also impact how wood fades, for example, hardwood flooring with a polyurethane finish fades much faster than other types of finishes.
How To Fix Faded Wooden Furniture
If the sun has caused a difference in color on your wood furniture, there are some remedies you can try to restore the consistent color at home, if this fails we’ve also included how to re-finish your wood product to bring it back to new.
Clean It
To start to bring your wood furniture back to the life you should start by giving it a good clean. You can use oil soap or polish for this, repeat a few times leaving it on the surface to dry then repeat.
Try Mayo
Mayonnaise can be excellent for fading blemishes on wood, simply dab some mayonnaise on the parts of the wood furniture which are affected, leave it to sit for around 30 minutes then wipe off.
Oil & Vinegar
Oil and vinegar are excellent for moisturising dried-out wood from the sun, mixing and wiping on the surface. This can also fix light water damage on wood.
Nuts
Yes, we said it, walnuts, crack one open and wipe it on scratched and faded parts of your wood then watch the magic happen!
Refinish Your Wood
If your natural remedies have failed to restore your faded wood then you might have to simply refinish it and apply more wood stain, this does require more work but it’s worth it rather than throwing your furniture away.
To refinish your wood you should sand the entire surface of your wood following the wood grain, starting with a coarser paper and ending with a finer one. This will help to restore the wood not only from fading but also from scratches.
How To Fix Faded Hardwood Floors
If you find that not only your wooden furniture has faded, but also your hardwood floors then luckily you can also re-finish them to bring them back to life.
We’ve listed some steps for restoring faded wooden floors below.
- Step one – First of all figure out just how badly your floors are faded, can you get away with refinishing some parts or do you need to tackle the whole floor, redoing the whole floor will give a more matching finish to your wood.
- Step two – Make sure you have some tools such as cloths, sandpapers, sealant, new wood stain and a spare wood board.
- Step three – Wear protective gear and start to sand your floor all over, after completing then vacuum your floor all over to remove dust.
- Step four – Next apply wood stain, you might need to experiment with this until you get the colour right, it’s hard to do this if you are only applying the stain to certain areas of your floor.
Tips To Prevent Fading On Your Wood
If you find that wood in your home becomes faded easily then there are some tips and tricks you can implement to keep wooden furniture looking new.
- Try window coverings – Keep your window covered where sunlight shines through, this can be done with mini blinds or curtains.
- Move your furniture around – Re-arranging your furniture can help to reduce how quickly furniture fades from the sun.
- Apply a UV inhibitor – You can use a UV inhibitor on your wood, this is like a polish and can slow fading down.
- Try Low-E windows – Low-emissivity windows help to reduce the amount of UV which gets inside of your home and protect furniture.
Final Words
Overall, faded wood is often a result of the sun and its UV rays, to restore the furniture to its original colour you can try natural remedies to re-moisturise the wood or refinish the wood by sanding it down and applying stain again.
