Along with selecting the type of wood to have your project made from, you might also be wanting to select a color / paint finishing option. We have two main types of coloring we can add to your wood project: 1. Paint and 2. Stain / Alcohol Markers. The information below will hopefully help you decide which look you’d like for your finished product.
Paint – Acrylic or Oil Based
Painting the wood covers the surface with an opaque color that does not let the grain of the wood show through. The texture may still show, but the surface will be a uniform color, despite what the grain of the underlying wood does.
Some projects that call for a single base color will be painted prior to lasering. Examples of this would be a sign where a white background is preferred over a natural wood grain. Then, whether or not a base color is used, details are hand-painted after the wood runs through the laser and are applied with brushes or paint pens.
Stain – Wood Stains or Alcohol Markers
Staining the wood changes the color of the surface, but, because it is semi-transparent, also allows the grain of the wood to show through. This means that areas of the surface that are darker due to the wood grain often are darker in color after the stain / markers are applied. This variation is more obvious in lighter colored stains and less so with darker colors.
Much like painted projects, a single color can be applied prior to lasering, or details can be painted after the wood has run through the laser. Unlike paints, however, it is not common to layer stains – each section of the wood will have only one color applied to it.
