Walnut is a deeply colored wood. It is very stable, quite expensive, but absolutely beautiful when finished. Our lumber comes from Illinois and Indiana from lumber mills that kiln dry the wood and then put the lumber through a steaming process. They then dry the lumber a second time. This process “bleeds” irregularities in color through the entire board, resulting in a quite uniform color. We generally do not use the remaining white sapwood, except in hidden areas of a project. The standing rule of thumb when using walnut: if you don’t want to see any white sapwood in your finished piece, order approximately twice as much material a you might usually buy.