Black Japan stain, sprayed and lacquered. Two timber options, two very different results.
Stained racking is the one system where the timber underneath changes everything.
On western red cedar, a Black Japan stain sits dense and solid. The grain all but disappears and what’s left is a stark, saturated black — closer to a painted surface than a timber one. It’s the most graphic option in the range, and it reads as a single block of colour.
On blackened ash, the same stain behaves quite differently. The grain stays legible through the finish, so the racking still reads unmistakably as timber — stained, not blacked out. Warmer, more tactile, and closer to a piece of joinery than a monolith.
Neither is better. They’re two aesthetics from the same finish, and the decision is usually made standing in the room.
Stained racking is the most labour-intensive system we build. Every component is machined, assembled, disassembled, then sprayed, stained and lacquered, then reassembled — a sequence that can’t be shortcut, and the reason a stained cellar looks the way it does.
