In the ideal construction,  your stair treads would be made out of the same wood as “other” design elements within the same space. So for instance if your hardwood flooring … or baseboard and casing … or railing is made of Red Oak, then you would normally want to have stairs installed in red oak as well.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t cheat…. and use maple when your floor is birch … or red oak when your flooring is white oak … it just means that when it comes to finishing and colour matching your stairs to these OTHER wood elements the task is easier if the wood species is the same.

As an example, white oak is naturally a more grey based tint, verses the red and yellow overtones red oak takes on as it get exposed to UV light as it ages, … so stain matching red oak to a white oak floor, especially if the overall goal it to follow current trends and pull the grey overtones … becomes much more challenging for the one responsible for colour matching.

 

For that reason, we try when possible to match wood species to your environment… recently we have made stairs in white ash, tigerwood and white oak treads, but here’s a few examples ..

 

Birch Stair Treads: Good match to pine, with a bit more durability, little harder..

Cherry & Brazilian Stair Treads: rich natural colours that intensify with age

Mahogany Stair Treads: can mean many different colours depending on type of mahogany

Maple Stair Treads: clean white colour, with little variation, unless ordered otherwise

Red Oak Stair Treads: most common wood used for steps and flooring

Further Information:

You can fax over a drawing or email us today and we’ll get right back to you with pricing. Don’t forget to tell us what type of wood and all the dimensions (length: left to right, depth: front to back and thickness-standard a full 1″ but we have made up to 2.5″ thick treads on special order ).

It is kind of like a custom made set of jeans. We make treads in the size and shape you need and the wood you would like. Helping DIY’ers is our specialty, we’re little too 🙂