Hardwood Stairs Not Matching Rest of House - Ok?

[twogirlsmommy]

I don't want to pay or spend the time to refinish my 1980's golden oak stair case but want to try to stain it to closely match the dining room / living room floors that the previous owners refinished.  It is impossible to match - was thinking of maybe doing a contrast.  Like this:



Thoughts?  I thought the contrast would be better than trying to hard to match and not.

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[TBM]

I want to like like the high contrast, but I don't. I'm not sure what bothers me about it, but think the dark tones would need to be repeated somewhere else for it to make sense. That example just looks like someone plunked a staircase from another house into that one to me.

At our old house the stairs didn't match the rest of the floors exactly, and we got a lot of compliments. The color was just different enough to look intentional, but it had the same tones so it still tied in well.

[twogirlsmommy]

Jun 14, 2016 15:12:06 GMT -5 @sfgal530 said:

Are those your actual stairs? If so, they look kind of small / narrow / steep to me, and with that I might consider a carpet runner just for safety's sake. Wood stairs are crazy slippery - we have wood throughout our home and then did a carpet runner on the stairs.

That being said, if it's just the angle of the photo and you don't think the stairs would be slippery, then I think the contrast looks okay. I don't love it, but it isn't something that jumps out at me as a terrible look.

Those aren't my stairs, just an example I found online.  I would like to do my stairs that color, my actual hardwood floors are darker - in between the 2 colors.

I have and will have a runner.  We are replacing the carpet and runner so now is the time to change the stairs if we want to.

[simpsongal]

I'm confused, you don't want to refinish the stairs but you want to stain them? Are you going to use a gel stain or something to try to 'paint them darker' with stain?

I think some contrast w/stairs and floor is fine - esp if the stairs will be slightly obscured with a runner.

[twogirlsmommy]

Jun 14, 2016 15:26:53 GMT -5 simpsongal said:

I'm confused, you don't want to refinish the stairs but you want to stain them? Are you going to use a gel stain or something to try to 'paint them darker' with stain?

I think some contrast w/stairs and floor is fine - esp if the stairs will be slightly obscured with a runner.

Yes, stain with gel stain.  We are having the house painted and our painters are not charging too much extra to do a gel stain.  Refinishing is completely out of out budget.

[twogirlsmommy]

Jun 14, 2016 15:15:45 GMT -5 TBM said:

I want to like like the high contrast, but I don't. I'm not sure what bothers me about it, but think the dark tones would need to be repeated somewhere else for it to make sense. That example just looks like someone plunked a staircase from another house into that one to me.

At our old house the stairs didn't match the rest of the floors exactly, and we got a lot of compliments. The color was just different enough to look intentional, but it had the same tones so it still tied in well.

Do you have a picture? Curious to see the contrast.

[moorea]

I'm not a fan of the dark contrast - I think I'd go with a close match. The previous owners of our house had three different colors of wood floor throughout the first floor. Drove me nuts and the first thing we did was refinish them all to the same color.

[LoveTrains]

I like the contrast!

[TBM]

Jun 14, 2016 20:02:00 GMT -5 twogirlsmommy said:

Jun 14, 2016 15:15:45 GMT -5 TBM said:

I want to like like the high contrast, but I don't. I'm not sure what bothers me about it, but think the dark tones would need to be repeated somewhere else for it to make sense. That example just looks like someone plunked a staircase from another house into that one to me.

At our old house the stairs didn't match the rest of the floors exactly, and we got a lot of compliments. The color was just different enough to look intentional, but it had the same tones so it still tied in well.

Do you have a picture? Curious to see the contrast.

I don't think I have any photos. If I do, they aren't on any of my current devices, but I can look tomorrow.

[thatgirl2478]

My parents' house has darker stairs like that picture and it looks good.

Sent from my XT1080 using proboards

[thatgirl2478]

This is inside the front door at my parents house - you can see there are 3 different wood colors - the floor, the railing and the treads (well, technically the risers are also a different color, but painted white doesn't count IMO).

[TBM]

Jun 15, 2016 8:23:20 GMT -5 thatgirl2478 said:

This is inside the front door at my parents house - you can see there are 3 different wood colors - the floor, the railing and the treads (well, technically the risers are also a different color, but painted white doesn't count IMO).

That works, but it is a nice blend of wood tones.

I think the key is for the differences to not be too extreme....at least not without something else that color to balance the space. If you have mid tone wood floors you can go either way without it looking weird, where the photo example posted just looked like there was no connection to me.