Why don't you want to glue down the vinyl to the treads and add a nosing?

It's going to be impossible to match raw red poplar to white oak flooring exactly. Have you considered changing the treads to white oak?

Not possible

Not happening . We just did our stairs to the basement with the same vinyl flooring as the basement floors and that is what you should do.

Totally possible. take Sherwin Williams a sample of what you need to match and what wood you’re using to stain and they can work miracle. you may need to give them a day or two.

"Totally possible. take Sherwin Williams a sample of what you need to match "

Yeah? They are 2 completely different grain patterns and porosity? I do not see how they will stain similarly at all, color aside.

Thanks everyone - looks like I can't do this like I thought I could. We are hoping to get the stairs wrapped with lvp. Some of the treads are exposed, which is apparently an issue to wrap? Extra piece in the middle of each stair is just a guard while we still have work being done in the house.

Anyway, thanks for the advice.

Your stairs were not designed for stain- paint them white (or black) and install a runner.

@HALLETT & Co. why are they not designed for stain? we stained them in our previous home and they came out great.

Because they are plywood in the center with poplar on the ends not a solid step- so you always intended to have carpet and you do in your current house?

Ahh!

Are your floors prefinished or site finished? If the white oak is light, you might could get away with a clear coat on the pine steps and it blend well enough.

Shead her new floors are vinyl and printed to look like a species different than her stairs are actually built from. The nice thing is that poplar has very little grain so you MIGHT be able to match the color but you will never get them to look like oak... Do you have a photo of the LVP?

Wear very dark sunglasses.

@HALLETT & Co., it's been a long day.....totally forgot the OP said LVP in her first post between my first comment and second comment. I was looking at what appeared to be solid wood in the pic she posted.

FWIW, my builder installed red oak treads after we had very light white oak flooring installed and he clear coated them. It's not off terribly but it's been a bone of contention between us. It's not horrible but he gave us a discount so I'm living with them for now :/

Oak is oak right ;)

Yep, oak is oak.....and one oak looks just like the other when the builder is color blind. Seriously. We learned that at the tail end of our build which made almost everything else that had gone wonky totally understandable (like beams stained the wrong color and not culling the reddish stones from our our fireplace mix like we'd asked). Definitely an A HA! moment ;(