Personally, I don't think it's necessary for you handrails to match your floor. Nice wood floors are sort of like bluejeans, in that they usually work well with other things. My handrails are a beautiful decorative blond wood, and they have never matched my floor. However, if your handrails/stairs are a major focal point of your room, you may feel that they should match to unify the space. In any case, it's your house and you should do whatever you think you'd like best!

Sorry for the confusion. Let's see if I can clear it all up. We are planning to replace all of our floors, and also put hardwood on the staircase, and maybe replace the bannister depending on the cost considerations. The modern picture in the post contains the same flooring hardwood color as our new floors. We were also initially planning to match our stairs and the staircase/bannister to the light hardwood flooring. Upon seeing the modern pic above, we are now desperate to achieve the same look of matching the hardwood flooring with the walnut(?) stairs and also add the distinct accented walnut bull nosing. Upon further investigation, we discovered that Tempered Glass railings are prohibitively expensive in our area. So, we were hoping to use the same walnut stain on the stairs as depicted in the modern picture above, and somehow attempt to match wooden bannisters and spindles to those floors. I was hoping you could advise as to what kind of bannister and wooden/metal spindles would work best with the walnut stairs, and light hardwood flooring. I am also entirely terrible with colors. Are the stairs in the picture look walnut color? Worth nothing, we are aiming for a modern, minimalistic/clean, mid-century look throughout the rest of the house. On the staircase you see in the "current house" picture, I was hoping to get rid of the swirl at the end of the railing. Thanks in advance!

If I was given the choice I would not carpet the stairs. I would keep the wood as is ( if it is in good shape) or stain it to match your floors. If any money is saved I would replace the metal rails with classic wood spindles.

Stax, if I was working, I would have ZERO issues paying to redesign and install all necessary precautions. However, I am unemployed and have been since April, along with 5,000,000 other Californians... I am concerned about keeping my OWN home. If they had allowed this 2 years ago, it wouldn't be an issue now but they felt it was unneeded... well, now it IS needed, but they will still be opposed. I simply asked if anyone happened to know if we could install without needing to rebuild... I appreciate your consideration in responding, I have taken your suggestion into consideration but I know my in-laws and what their opinions will be. If you can offer nothing more constructive than berating me for my concern for MY financial situation, I offer you the option to not respond. To Seabornman and Lyndee Lee, thank you. We will need to contact a fabricator and see what he has to say. I appreciate everyone's time.