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Flooring Design Dilemma DIY

I would like help with choosing stair tread finish

4 years ago

I'm in the process of prepping my stairs to go from carpet to hardwood. I've already prepped my bottom stairs and will do the upper stair case afterwards. Although I'd be able to get a perfect match if I stain it myself, I'll be using stair-tread.com's pre-finished "retro treads" because I don't want to mess with sanding, patching, staining, and sealing.

I'd like to match them to the original flooring (engineered vinyl plank) as best as possible, but the samples they sent me are just slightly more red than my golden floor, but really only noticeable in certain lighting. Will the slight variation in color actually draw more attention to the fact that they're slight off? Or am I over thinking it?

I took several photos in various lighting. The risers will be white to match the trim. https://imgur.com/a/GzaXnbe

Also, my floor is EVP, and these retro-treads are hardwood. Will that be weird?

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Comments (5)

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Patricia Colwell Consulting
4 years ago
We are just doing our staircase and we have LVP and are using it for the stairs to match the flooring. I never like real wood and fake next to each other
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Maureen
4 years ago
If you have completely exhausted other options, I think this choice will be fine.

We recently redid ours (with similar issue) and don‘t even notice, as we added a runner in the hallway and that helped draw the eye away from the slight difference.
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Seems like way more trouble than it's worth. Even with plywood at $1/sf and 5/4 oak stair treads at $5-6/sf the difference in materials is only a couple hundred bucks. Seems like you would quickly eat that up in the labor of trying to match up two different materials. Materials are only a tiny part of the cost of complex carpentry like stairs. If you wrap the stairs completely with carpet you can save a lot because the level or workmanship can be much lower, therefore faster and cheaper.
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Simulating wood with a photographic applique layer under a clear protective layer, laminate is just a composite. I would not consider spending money on a laminate floor at this point. It isn’t a better solution than going with the ivory carpet for a few years. Laminate is $, but it's noisy and doesn’t like water. "Water can cause laminate flooring to swell if it gets between the seams. Being made of pressed board, laminate can easily chip--especially the critical tongue and groove sections.” Where I would spend extra money is on the padding under the rug. That will go a long way to help keep the rug clean. It isn’t the rug fibre which stains, it is whatever liquid has soaked into the pad that keeps coming back to haunt you. Spend a few cents extra and ask for Mohawk Smart Step. it has a coating which keeps any liquid from soaking into the pad. If it needs to be seamed, have them duck-tape the seams. I have a light wool wall to wall carpet. Should something spill, I grab a dry cloth or paper towel or newspaper and step on it until all the liquid is out of the rug. Then, use a combo of water and ammonia, and just dab at it. Actual dirt or mud, just let it dry and then vacuum.
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Darker is BETTER. Like in sewing seams on a garment, it is better to do DARKER with the tread than it is lighter. Jacobean stain has been used successfully to remove the red from red oak. If don't properly, the Jacobean stain (like water popped treads) will come VERY close to the tone/colour or the DARKER stripe in the feature wall. To keep the country theme, you can have the RISERS painted WHITE. The WHITE will help the Jacobean 'pull off' this change. A small bit of separation from the floor colour, the tread colour and the feature wall colour is all that is needed to FOOL the eye into thinking everything is tone on tone on tone. Water pop + Jacobean stain + ONE COAT of finish. Remember: the FINISH is what will add more yellow/orange (oil based or oil modified poly) or NOT (water based poly....like Bona Mega One or Traffic or Traffic HD). Find out the FINISH for the treads. You will be picking blind if you do not have a coat of finish over the stain.
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You can also have your installer cut up and install small rugs as a runner. Find a rug that is maybe about 48" wide and whatever length. Have the rugs cut to the proper width, have the edges turned under on the sides, and have the rugs pieced down the stairs. That's often how it has to be done to get something wide enough. Make sure they match any pattern. You can also do with the broadloom (12'wide) carpet that you like.
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SJ McCarthy
4 years ago
Sorry but this is too obvious to me. I see plenty of green in the vinyl (brown with green and gray tones) while I see plenty of orange/red. Some people have a hard time seeing undertones. It takes a trained eye that does not have any colour-blindness concerns (up to 30% of men have some form of colour blindness...which could explain some things).

The treads are too close to a 'bad match' to make this work. I'm sorry but you would be better off gluing down vinyl on the treads and then figuring out a nosing.

BTW: have you measured everything to ensure your stairs will maintain 'code'?

Once a stair changes finish (like carpet to hardwood, vinyl, laminate, etc) the stairs must be reassessed to ensure code compliance. A finishing carpenter is the person needed to make sure stairs remain to code.

The top of the stairs and the bottom of the stairs are where you would see issues when changing finishes.
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HU-751650643
4 years ago
If you paint the riser white instead of staining it that would cause a visual break in between the two wood tones and make any small variation less noticeable.
tina page
3 years ago
Hello, would you mind letting me know how your staircase project came out. I'm considering using the same product for basement stairs
Thank you,
Tina
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