Ready Seal Review

Looking for a Ready Seal review? My Ready Seal Stain review will provide you everything you need to know about the project in a totally unbiased project.

Ready Seal Review: My Unbiased Review of Ready Seal Stain and Sealer

I’m going to kick things back off with a product review of Ready Seal Wood Stain and Sealer. I want to try to do more of these. This post is NOT sponsored, and I bought the item with my own money. The company did not send it to me for free.

I’m just hoping my review helps someone quickly and easily make a decision about whether or not they want to use this product. So I found Ready Seal because I was looking for a quick and easy solution for the outdoor table and benches I am working on.

There was once a day when I would do a normal stain to get the perfect color and then several coats of an outdoor sealant. Not now, folks. I’m working during nap time, so I needed an all-in-one solution. Ready Seal Professional-Grade Wood Stain and Sealer is that solution.

I read some reviews online, and they made it sound pretty easy. The can says no laps, streaks, or runs. UV blocking, water proofing, and mildew resistance. So I ordered a can of Dark Walnut, the darkest color it comes in.

(Note on Prime, I ordered it via Amazon because neither Lowes nor Home Depot carried it in stores, but it took a few days over the normal Prime shipment time to get here.)

Applying Ready Seal Stain

So for the table and benches, I was working with non-pressure-treated pine. It wasn’t terrible looking, but it wasn’t the good stuff, either. Here’s what it looked like before, and then with one coat of the stain on half on the top.

I applied the stain with a chip brush on the benches and with a small foam roller on the table since it had a bigger surface area. Both are equal options, in my opinion. The roller was faster, but I did end up having to whip out the brush to get in to some of the nooks and crannies.

Since I’m cheap, I use brushes and rollers multiple times for one project. I like to avoid washing out things that don’t just have an easy soap and water cleanup. To keep the brushes and rollers from drying, I wrap them in aluminum foil.

Here’s what the table looked like with the stain fully applied (still wet on the top, dry on the legs, so you can see there isn’t a big color difference at all).

4 Things I liked about Ready Seal…

1. One coat for stain and sealer with a decent variety of colors.

2. I can order it on Amazon and it’s a pretty good price for a gallon can. The can goes a long way, too. I used it for a large table and two benches and barely made a dent in a can. I’d imagine if you were doing a deck or fence, one gallon would actually go a very long way.

3. Easy application. Much easier than a water- or oil-based polyurethane. You can have absolutely no painting or finishing skills and use this without messing it up. It really is goof-proof.

4. Not a terrible odor like some stains and finishes have.

…and 2 things I didn’t love

1. The Dark Walnut color wasn’t really a dark walnut. I picked the darkest color they had because I wanted a darker stain for this set. But Dark Walnut had a much more golden brown tint to it than I’d expected. A second coat didn’t make a difference.

2. The first coat sunk in and was dry to the touch within a few hours. The can says to wait at least 45 minutes for a second coat and 48 to 72 hours to dry completely. But the second coat took days to dry at all and was still a bit oily. At first I thought I’d put it on too thick, but I don’t think I did. I ended up wiping the piece down with a cloth and putting it outside in direct sun/breeze to speed up dry time. That did help a lot. Considering this stuff is really made for fences and decks, I didn’t mind setting the pieces outside as long as there wasn’t rain or snow in the immediate forecast.

The Verdict on Ready Seal Stain?

I definitely recommend it. The ease of acquiring it and applying it made up for the fact that the color wasn’t exactly what I’d hoped for and that it took longer than I’d expected to dry. I’m happy with it!

SUMMER 2020 UPDATE!

Hey everyone! Popping in for a summer 2020 update a few years after I originally wrote this post to add a bit more info to my Ready Seal review. The bottom line? If I was an 8/10 before, I’m a 10/10 right now. I used this stuff on our fence this summer, and it turned out absolutely fantastic. I think that while this stuff did meet 100% of my expectations for outdoor furniture, it was everything I was looking for in a fence stain.

So I decided to pressure wash and stain my fence this summer after it was about 2 years old. I had never sealed it, just didn’t get around to it. I did a ton of research, and after comparing Ready Seal Stain and Sealer with Behr’s transparent outdoor stain and sealer, I decided that this was prefereable for my fence.

Why? Because this stuff is just so damn easy to use! You don’t really have to fuss with drips, and the stain soaks into the wood. It isn’t something that’s going to crack or peel in the future, so I decided that this was what I was going to use. Plus I had experience with it, so it wasn’t a total unknown. Here is the fence before:

What Ready Seal stain did I use?

So of course I agonized over the color I would use. If you go on Ready Seal’s website, they will send you a nifty sample pack of all of their stain colors. I tried them all on two different pieces of wood. Then I picked my two favorites and tried them on an inconspicous part of the fence.

Of course the fence wood was much more porous than the scrap pieces I had in the garage, so the color was a bit different. But the test pieces in the garage told me where to start, and I settled on the shade “Natural,” which is the lightest shade. You might see it referred to as “light oak.”

Applying the stain

Since our fence is a board-on-board design, the thought of painting the entire thing with a brush or roller made me want to die. So I ended up using my paint sprayer, and it worked amazingly. Since the stain is so thin, I didn’t need to thin it out at all—just dumped it in the paint sprayer can. I have a post all about how I applied Ready Seal using my paint sprayer—check it out!

I was extremely happy with how this stain and sealer went on with my sprayer. Absolutely no drips or issues. I did one thorough coat on the fence, front and back. Then a few hours later I did a second coat. It made such a difference in how our fence looked. The color you see in the finished photos below did fade a tad as the stain settled in and dried over a few weeks, but it still looks lovely.

So I hope this post helps you if you’re looking for a good Ready Seal review and are wanting to use this on a fence or piece of outdoor furniture. I am extremely happy with how this stuff went on to my fence and definitely recommend it.

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