How To Get Rid Of Wood Stain Smell [10 Fast & Easy Ways]
In the article we will tell you how to get rid of wood stain smell or reduce it using various methods. After repairs in a house or apartment, in which paint and wood stain materials were used, the smell remains for a long time.
Wood stains contain chemical compounds and preservatives that have a strong smell. Many wood stain ingredients also have a toxic component, making it harmful to humans, animals and plants if inhaled as a vapor.
Therefore, it is extremely important to get rid of these odors from living and working areas during and after staining wooden objects. Typically it involves ventilation or absorbing stain smells until they dissipate.
How To Get Rid Of Wood Stain Smell
- Turn on exhaust fans located in the room where you are dealing with the strong smell of wood stain.
- If the stained room does not have an exhaust fan, open the windows. If you have fans or air purifiers, turn them on as well.
- Fill several containers with baking soda, and place them throughout the stained room. If you are dealing with stained furniture, place the container on top of or inside the furniture.
- Wait 8 to 12 hours, then turn off all fans or air purifiers and close windows.
- Wait another 24 hours.
- Check the room. If the wood stain smell persist, repeat the process or pour distilled white vinegar or charcoal powder into containers and place them in the stained room overnight.
- Check the room again in the morning and repeat the entire process as many times as necessary until you get rid of wood stain smell.
Methods To Get Rid Of Wood Stain Smells
| Methods To Get Rid Of Wood Stain Smells |
|---|
| 1. Room ventilation |
| 2. Baking Soda |
| 3. Vinegar |
| 4. Coffee grounds |
| 5. Onions |
| 6. Salt |
| 7. Citrus fruits (Orange or Lemon) |
| 8. Charcoal |
| 9. Essential oils |
You cannot reuse the coffee, vinegar or any other natural substance that you use for this task.
1. Room ventilation
One of the simplest methods of removing wood stain smell is to ventilate the room for a long time. If it happens in the winter, you have to leave the house for a few days. Remember to leave all windows wide open. Upon returning, you will be convinced that the stain has completely dried and the wood stain smell has completely disappeared.
The most popular and easiest option is to open all interior doors and windows for a day. An additional advantage of this solution is that the wood stain, which might not have dried completely, will definitely dry out during this time.
The first step is the most obvious: ventilation. Take advantage of all possible openings and open them to force cross ventilation and eliminate the wood stain smell. The fresh air will make everyday life easier in the newly stained house whether it’s hot or cold.
In an apartment or house, windows and doors are wide open. Windy weather speeds up the process. In case of calm weather, a fan is used. It accelerates the distribution of fresh air throughout the room. Can be installed so that the wind passes through the entire apartment or house.
As we know that in winter it is difficult to sleep with the windows fully open, let’s go to the following tips, which can be done with the windows half-open or closed.
If you want to remove oil based stains from wood, this article is the best guide you can follow!
Ventilate using Air conditioner
You will need a model that passes air through filters. Other types of air conditioners lead to a worsening of the situation. The respiratory tract and eyes of a person will lose their protective function.
Many air conditioners have the function of air purification to get rid of an unpleasant smell, they must be set to the mode of supplying warm air.
During operation, the air conditioner takes air from the room and not only heats it, but also subjects it to high-quality cleaning, which makes it possible to remove the smell of wood stain from the room quite quickly.
Please note that the power of the cleaning system in different air conditioners is not the same. If an inexpensive device is primarily intended to adjust the microclimate in an apartment, it can take a long time to remove a strong wood stain smell.
Ventilate using Air humidifier
An effective way to get rid of wood stain is to use a humidifier. The device is turned on indoors at full power. Several times a day, wiping furniture and floors is required.
Their downside is that the effect is short-lived. For a long-term effect, a long-term implementation of the methods is required: from a couple of days to a week.
How to Get Rid of Wood Stain Smell using Homemade Remedies
2. Baking Soda
Baking soda is a good absorbent and therefore excellent for getting rid of wood stain smell. To remove unwanted wood stain smell, sprinkle baking soda on the floor, carpet, and other surfaces in the room with an even layer.
It is not recommended to only sprinkle the powder over hard-to-reach wood places and surfaces, where it will be too difficult to remove the soda later. The baking soda is left all night and should be removed with a vacuum cleaner in the morning.
In addition, smooth hard surfaces, laminate and linoleum, as well as window sills should be rinsed with clean water. The baking soda absorbs the main stench, so the wood stain smell will weaken or disappear after the first application of the powder.
But to achieve the final result, the procedure can be repeated several times until the unwanted wood stain smell can be completely removed.
3. White vinegar
It is very fashionable to use white vinegar. It is that it is one of the greatest natural disinfectants, odor neutralizers, lighteners and stain removers. This is due to its acidic components that fight from bacteria to grease and bad odors.
This household acid works great for treating many of the challenging odors around the house. You just have to prepare 4 bowls and pour half a cup of white vinegar inside them.
Place the containers at key points to better surround the entire piece of furniture. Leave the vinegar bowls there for 2-3 days before doing a smell test to see if the wood stain smell has been removed.
Let’s see how to use vinegar to get rid of wood stain smell:
- Find several small wide mouth containers.
- Pour enough white vinegar inside them, it can be pure or mixed with water.
- Disperse them by placing them in various areas of the house where the wood have been stained, while opening the windows.
- Wait all day for this smell to dissipate or leave them there overnight.
- After there are no traces left simply throw them down the drain.
4. Coffee
Coffee grounds absorb odors very well, especially those of paint and wood stain. All you have to do is put some on a plate or other container, and place it in the center of the repainted room.
If the room is very large, pour the marc into saucers, which you will place at the 4 corners of the room. In both cases, renew the contents regularly, until the complete dissipation of odors.
- Start by putting on some gloves to work and don’t leave any leftovers.
- Find a bag of pure coffee beans of the best you can get.
- Using a grinder (or a coffee bean grinder) crush and separate the beans until they are finely ground.
- Using two or more bowls (depending on the width of your painted room) pour in the half-pulverized coffee pieces.
- These coffee grounds should be placed in the corners of the newly stained rooms.
- Leave them overnight or until the wood stain smell dissipates..
- Then dispose of this coffee in a landfill.
5. Onions
This method may sound strange, but it has been used successfully for generations to remove stain odor. Start by cutting a whole onion into quarters and placing each piece into a container.
Next, fill these containers with a cup of water and place the bowls around the piece of furniture that smells like stain. The bowls have to be in the room for 2-3 days so that they absorb all the unwanted odors. Once this time has passed, do a smell test to make sure the smell is gone, then remove the bowls.
6. Salt
Another way to get rid of unwanted wood stain odors is to use regular table salt. It is used as follows: salt is thickly diluted in basins or buckets of warm water, and then containers are placed throughout the house.
Salt water absorbs unpleasant odors and helps to avoid a prolonged stench of stain in the room. If you put pots of salt water in the room in advance, even before the start of staining, the unpleasant wood stain smell will be much weaker.
7. Citrus fruits
Orange Peel
Just like onions, oranges do a good job of removing stain odor from furniture. Peel two oranges and place the peel into two separate bowls, then place them on the sides of the cabinet.
Leave the orange peel-filled bowls for 48 hours before returning to the furniture piece to check if the wood stain smell has disappeared and remove the bowls.
Lemon
The citrus scent seems quite light and unobtrusive, but at the same time helps to cope well with the unpleasant smell of wood stain. Several fresh lemon fruits should be thinly sliced, put on flat plates and placed along the walls around the room, the lemon will absorb the chemical stain smell and at the same time be able to flavor the room.
Lemon is unlikely to help cope with the strong aroma of fresh wood stain, so it is better to use it when the main odor has already disappeared. Most likely, you will have to use citrus fruits for 2-3 days in a row – as the slices dry out, they will have to be replaced with new ones.
How To Get Rid Of Wood Stain Smell with Odor Absorbents
8. Charcoal
To get rid of wood stain smell, use activated carbon or charcoal for the barbecue. You don’t need to do anything special with it, just divide it into containers or wide bowls and place them around the stained area of the house. Like water, this material has absorbent properties.
Even simple charcoal is ideal for getting rid of the wood stain smell in your house. For this procedure, you break up the charcoal into small pieces, place them carefully on a damp piece of kitchen roll and place everything together in a bucket.
You set this up in the freshly painted room and leave it there overnight. In the next morning, the annoying smell of stain and paint is a thing of the past. The amount of charcoal you need depends on the size of the room.
And be careful not to get too close to the freshly stained wood with the charcoal. Otherwise you will need to start over.
Lacquer can be easily removed from wood by following this step by step guide I’ve created!
9. Silica gel
Best of its kind litter for cat litter in the form of granules, perfectly fighting unpleasant stain odors.
The plan of action is the same as in the case of charcoal.
Silica Gel granules are distributed in containers and placed on the stained or painted area. After the complete disappearance of the wood stain smell, the silica gel granules should be poured into the toilet and washed off.
10. Essential oils
Essential oils are also a great solution to get rid of the smell of wood stain in a room or bedroom.
It is very simple to use them: you need to soak several cotton pads with oil and distribute them throughout the stain furniture. You can also add a few drops of essential oil in some containers of water, or drop a few drops into the liquid for a humidifier.
We recommend mint or eucalyptus oil essences, as they are refreshing and discreet.
The best idea is to use this tip along with one of the previous ones, as the oil is more efficient at covering the stain smell, not so much at eliminating it. They are perfect for living rooms, as they offer a pleasant aroma to the environment.
If you try to remove the strong smell of fresh wood stain with essential oil, it will give an ambiguous effect, most likely the stain smells will mix and lead to a headache.
How To Avoid Toxic Wood Stain Smell
You can avoid the spread of a strong smell of wood stain by following this rules:
- Much depends on the type of stain, so be careful when choosing stain. Give preference to water-based wood stain products. They don’t smell as strong.
- Tools used to stain the wood surface should be cleaned outside the home.
- Carry out all staining work with windows open to minimize the negative effects of fumes on the body.
- Store wood stain in a shed or basement. If this is not possible, tightly close the jars and wrap them in cellophane. You can store them in the bathroom or toilet, on a closed shelf.
- It is easier to remove the stain smell in the house if textiles, clothes, and upholstered furniture are removed from the room before that.
- And what cannot be removed should be carefully wrapped in foil.
How to Prevent Wood Stain Smell
Some wood stains, give off strong odors once applied. This is essentially due to their content of volatile organic compounds, the famous VOCs. If it is recommended to always open the windows of a room when it is stained in order to ventilate it well and reduce odors as much as possible, this practice is not always enough to eliminate them.
To fight the annoying smell of wood stain, mix a tablespoon of baking soda with 10 liters of water. You put this mixture in the room overnight and the next morning you can look forward to fresh air without any annoying wood stain smell.
Another way to prevent the wood stain from giving off that smell if you add a little vanilla extract to the stain can (of course, before using it on the wood surface). Calculate two teaspoons for every liter of wood stain.
Conclusions
There are many ways to get rid of the wood stain smell. You can get rid of the wood stain smell that remains after repairs with both household (homemade) methods and specialized methods.
They can be combined with each other. For example, lemon and coffee grounds. Before starting the procedure, for the best effect, the room must be ventilated also.
Now that you know how to get the smell out, it’s just a matter of choosing the right colors and products to renovate each furniture!
FAQs
How long does it take for wood stain smell to disappear ?
Depending on the type of wood stain you have used it will take more or less 72 hours for the smell to disappear. Wait at least 72 hours to return to a room that has been freshly stained, even if you can no longer smell wood stain fumes. Use an air purifier to help reduce VOC levels in the air.
Is the wood stain smell harmful?
Yes, the smell of wood stain is harmful to your health and can cause adverse effects, some of which may even take a major form in the long term. The greater the exposure to the toxic smell, the greater the effects. Inhalation of stain smell can lead to headaches, dizziness, vision problems, respiratory disorders.
