What are the disadvantages of silver staining?

One drawback of silver staining is its tendency to produce artifacts and background staining. Contaminants or nonspecific binding can affect the accuracy and specificity of the stain. Another con is that it involves several steps and reagents, making it a time-consuming and labor-intensive process. After staining, the gel must be developed to visualize the proteins, and this development time can vary, leading to inconsistent results. Another drawback is that the formaldehyde used in the fixing process makes silver staining generally incompatible with mass spectrometry. Furthermore, silver staining is a destructive method because it converts silver ions into metallic silver, which permanently alters the sample.