Thanks for all the info, everyone! I have to use a carpet runner on these stairs, because the center area is pretty trashed. One had the lip of the stair partly broken and another one had a big open knot. They're not pretty enough to stand alone, but i think they will look fine mostly covered up. I'm hoping i won't regret using the water based stuff, but the part of the tread that shows won't really be walked on. Here are pictures. the treads have two coats of polycrylic right now, and I'm planning to add a third.

I think stick with the charcoal colour for most. I would do the cedar soffit colour on the stairs etc. Where are you located? This looks like Vancouver!

It would look odd to have a light coloured stair/banister with a dark coloured floor. If anything, dark stairs (treads) and dark banister are used to highlight a graceful staircase, but never the other way around. It will look like you didn't have enough money to finish the project... One way to do this is to look at painting the riser white (along with stringers and other trim) and then stain the treads and banister a darker colour (darker than the floor). This is a STUNNING look that supports your new floor colour. Can you do this at a later date? Sure. Can you STAND the look of the gold for a few years? I don't know. Only you can answer that question. Personally it would drive me batty and I would get physically sick every time I looked at my gold stair case. The good thing about that is it would encourage me to save HEAVILY to change the look of the stairs ASAP! As in "sell the car, get a beater, reduce my insurance, reduce my grocery bill by 50% (thereby losing weight in the process)" so that I could get my staircase dealt with immediately. But that's me. You have to live your life in your home. To do that comfortably, you need to know yourself better than you know your best friend. "Homeowner: Know Thyself."

I’m not the OP but this question relates to my current dilemma. We are replacing treads on stairs and the “discussion” is stuck on the risers. Should they be stained to match or painted white. I have seen both but it seems more recent design is going with stained risers. Since the last time we tried to redo these stairs was 13 years ago and we couldn’t agree on a lot of things and scrapped the project, I don’t want to get stuck again. The pics are of our staircase ripped out carpeting, a pic with stained risers, and a pic with painted risers. Since we are going through the work and expense, I want to make sure we aren’t putting in dated design from the get go. The other point we are discussing is wood spindles vs metal.