The Color of Coffee; Household Ideas

Because of it’s dark color and it’s ability to stain anything that it gets on, coffee has many practical uses. If you have ever spilled coffee on your favor shirt or pants, you know the frustration of trying to removed the color from these garments. Hence it is the perfect permanent pigment for many applications. Below are a few ideas but I am sure that you can think of a few more.

Furniture Stain
Taking an old white t-shirt dipped in strong black coffee, hand rub the coffee stain into any wood that will take a dark stain. Woods that are soft and porous work best, like pine, poplar, and oak. For a deeper color, make a paste out of coffee grounds and rub the paste on the wood. Once dried brush the excess paste off of the wood.

The final step is to seal your masterpiece with either an oil based polyurethane or hand rub wood wax until dry. Remember coffee is a water based form of stain so take care when choosing the right finishing product.

Painting
Just like water color paint, coffee can be used to make a sepia looking painting. Brew the color coffee you would like to use. We suggest that you use a dark brew and water down the final product in a water color paining pallet to get the desired tones.

On a piece of water color paper, take a water color brush and start painting. As a tip, always start with the lighter colors first and work towards the dark, you can always darken but you can not lighten once you have painted the coffee paint on the paper.

Once finished, let the picture dry.

Give Fabric An Antique Look
Like we said before, coffee can be a real pain to get out of cloths. However, in this case that can be good. Brew about two pots of coffee and place into a large bowl or basin. Taking the fabric you would like to dye, place it into the basin and let it soak. Two things to remember, the darker the coffee, the darker the dye will be and also the longer you let it sit, the better the dye will absorb. Take your fabric out of the basin and let it dry.

Coffee is not color fast or color safe in the wash so we suggest you get a hardening agent from your local craft store to help hold the color.

As a last tip and trick, if you treat your fabric using tie-dye technique you can achieve a different look all together. In the end, either way, you will have something that looks antique.