Can Brown Furniture Be Stained to Make It Black?

Personally if going from brown to black, I would use a good quality paint and paint it black. Clean well and sand to cut the shine. Paint with your choice of satin, semi-gloss or gloss.

If you do decide to strip and restain, you don't have to go back to bare wood and try to remove all the old color. Once you get all the finish coat off then you can sand and put the black stain on over the brown.

However, I just had a thought! You say you haven't had it very long. The chances are the color is in the finish coat and it may be finished with polyurethane, which is practally impossible to remove.

So scratch all of the above. Follow the advice to go to a GOOD paint store. Sherwin Williams or Kelly-Moore. Take a drawer with you so the paint experts can try to determine what kind of finish you have and then can tell how best to get it black.
Have fun!!
D.

Sure you can. It is quite the job, though. You have to strip the old finish off completely, though.

1. Remove all hardward, strip the old stain off completely- every nook and cranny
2. Sand down for a smooth finish and then wipe off all sand dust
3. either paint or stain it black- this will take a few coats and it needs to be sanded in between each coat

Depending on the size of your furniture, it is not something that can be done in a day. It is more of a two weekend project.

I do NOT suggest doing this in the house. It is stinky and messy.

You would still want to consult someone from maybe Sherwin williams or somewhere like that, but I'm almost certain you can. Just sand it down and restain. If nothing else, you can sand, prime, paint (like we are doing today on nursery furniture). The painting would probably do a lot better than staining, though. I have a friend that has painted all of her nursery furniture (for 4 kids), and you can't tell. It looks like it came that way. I'm hoping ours does. We're going from oak to a deep chocolate brown. The sanding was my least favorite, but it wasn't hard. Good luck!

My sister in law just mentioned a new product she has used to darken some wood in her home. She used it on her bathroom cabinets, but I'm sure it would work on furniture also. She said it was very easy. She just lightly sanded the cabinets and then brushed this stuff on. She said that you can make it as dark as you want by how much you brush on. I'm sure that they have different colors. We plan on trying it on a chest that I have. If you are interested, I will email her and get the exact name of it from her.