Staining new fir porch flooring

Hi Folks,

I have spent hours researching the best finish for a new porch floor consisting of vertical grain douglas fir.

It seems that none of the locally available stains are recomended. These would be Penofin, Superdeck, Cabots, Behr, Ben Moore etc. The recomended stains such as TWP, Armstrong Clark and Defy seem to only be available online. This is a problem as I would like to see samples first.

I have decided against paint or other film finishes and would like to go with a semi-transparent stain.

I want the color of the stained fir to be quite dark. I tried Penofin Redwood on a sample and the color is extremely light. Their sample in the store looked good but was on redwood rather than cedar of another light colored wood. I then tried other browns from Penofin and Superdeck and none have a dark, rich look. Maybe I should go grey for the best look.

At any rate, do you have any recomendations for a stain for new fir flooring that would give a good rich, dark look? Maybe that is only possible with a stain with more solids than the semi-transparent.

I am very frustrated with my search at this point.

I hate to order a product online and then be disappointed and suffer the financial loss.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Gary