Arborcoat Oil Stain Review
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Manufacturer Description: Arborcoat Oil Stain offer a variety of opacities in an array of captivating colors that let you express your own unique style. These finishes are designed to enhance the appearance of your deck, siding, or outdoor wood furniture with outstanding color retention. All Arborcoat Oil finishes are easy to apply and offer superior protection while enriching the texture and grain of exterior wood surfaces.
5.6
Total Score
Arborcoat Oil Stain Review
Product applies easily and the initial color looks great. It doesn’t seem to absorb in to the wood very well, definitively nowhere near how other oil based stains are absorbed. 14 month weathering test showed a pretty significant loss of color and darkening from mildew growth was beginning to occur. 
PROS
- Initial color looks good
- Easy to apply
CONS
- Doesn't absorb well
- Signficant color loss after 14 months
- Mildew growth beginning to occur after 14 months
Buyer beware!
Oil-based stain: Horrible and pervasive mold growth after 17 months, even in sunny and dry areas. It literally ruined my brand new, beautiful rough-hewn sided barn. Please be very careful using this product! I now need to somehow remove the mold (praying it hasn’t penetrated deeply into the wood) without damaging the siding (hand-scrubbing, no pressure washing) and re-stain my barn after less than 2 years. So disappointed in this product.
On cedar deck that was cleaned and power washed and sanded. Disappointed in the color look. Has a murky appearance not happy.
It worked for me!
Initial review by Editor is right about it laying on the board like thin paint. We bought some in the greyish-white color (forgot it’s name) and tested it on some boards. Put on with a brush as advised. Application was easy, but it’s very watery. It streaked and acted like thin paint. Didn’t soak into the wood. Wood was one year old PT pine, so was aged over a year. Returned it.
Can’t vouch for any of the other choices in the list since we didn’t use it.
This is a great stain product. I recently had my deck refinished and this is the stain the contractors used. It looks really great!
Worked pretty well at first, although must be on the look out for potential mold in the future.
We just built a new timber frame style home using kiln dried hand hewn tongue and groove siding. We used Leather saddle brown Arbor Coat that was applied by a professional painter before it was installed. After 1 year the siding on the south and west side of our home has faded, peeled and looks grey. The east and north side that get little sun exposure looks decent but we are very disappointed in the product. Benjamin Moore rep came out to assess and said that the stain should be reapplied after 2 years. WTH! If we had known that we would not have used this product, who wants to stain their home every 2 years. He offered use 5 gallons of stain for free. That won’t even cover 1/4 of what needs to be redone let alone the cost of having someone restain our home. VERY disappointed.
I used plain Arbor coat on a new fence (pine) and a porch railing (ironwood). The Pine looks slightly yellow which is fine. No fading/bleaching. On the upper deck ironwood: First coat looked great and then bleached out under a month… So I put on a 2nd coat about 2 months later. [This is not a fun job as it is an upper deck.] Looked great after a 2nd coat for about a week and still ended up bleached. Now I’m using Australian Timber Oil on the ironwood. So far so good -will know in a few weeks.