The ever popular and inexpensive Pine has yellow undertones. Not only does the hardness effect how a wood will accept stain (harder woods tend to accept stains better and more evenly) but also the natural color of the wood. The wood types we chose also are vastly different, ranging from extremely soft (birch) to hard (red oak) with undertones all over the map.
But with limited resources (not to mention space), we settled on 5 popular species of wood commonly used by DIYers, with 6 different stains 2 light, 2 medium and 2 dark. We’ve been wanting to do a wood/stain study for years now and in my head, I wanted to do every type of wood with about 20 different stains each.