Endospore staining is a differential technique that uses two stains to distinguish endospores from the rest of a bacterial cell. The most commonly used method, the Schaeffer-Fulton technique, uses heat to push a primary stain (malachite green) into the endospore. After washing with water—which decolorizes the rest of the cell while the endospore retains the green stain—a secondary counterstain (safranin) is applied to color the vegetative cells pink. When viewed under a microscope, green endospores appear either within or separate from the pink vegetative cells, while specimens without endospores will only show pink cells.