Best Wood for Stair Treads

Deciding on the best wood for stair treads

When designing wood stair treads for your home, you’ll have a great variety of options. The best wood for stair treads is a matter of personal preference – any hardwood or pine species can serve your purposes. The choice comes down to the type of grain and hues you like most, and whether you want your stair treads to match or complement your hardwood floors.

When matching your stairway to existing floors, the best wood for stair treads is obviously the wood you’ve selected for your hardwood floors. Matching the treads to your floors will create a visual cohesion and a greater sense of flow throughout your space. If you prefer to have your stair treads complement your floors, you can choose a different species of wood or decide to stain your treads to a complementary hue. Either approach will bring more visual focus to your stairway.

At Carlisle Wide Plank Floors, our design consultants can answer all your questions and offer expert advice about choosing the best wood for stair treads in your home. We’ll explain the benefits of Red Oak vs. Maple and the difference in density in Hickory vs. Walnut. We can help you decide on a texture treatment for your White Oak stair treads or explore finish possibilities for your Black Walnut stair treads. Ultimately, our goal is to assist you in choosing the best wood for stair treads that will be a reflection of your sense of style and beauty, and to create a surface that will delight and amaze you every time you return home.

The best wood for stair treads? It’s your choice.

At Carlisle, we offer a variety of hardwood flooring. Any of these species can be chosen to create durable wood floors and stair treads.

• Red Oak is one of the most popular hardwoods for flooring, thanks to its near perfect balance of stability, durability, beauty and affordability. Red Oak features deep salmon tones in the heartwood and tight, consistent grain that yields boards with exceptional widths and lengths.
• White Oak is a versatile floor with dramatic grain patterns and nutty brown and cocoa hues. An exceptionally dense and durable floor, White Oak complements any design scheme from casual to formal to contemporary.
• Rift and Quartersawn White Oak floorboards are cut at a 90° angle from the log’s growth rings to create planks with exceptionally straight grain lines running the length of the board. These floorboards can create a strikingly beautiful hardwood floor that has a more traditional and elegant feel.
• Brown Maple offers hues of rich gold, amber and brown. With subtle and consistent grain patterns, Brown Maple is an aesthetically stunning floor that’s also known for its hardness and durability.
• White Maple is a strikingly beautiful hardwood with cleaner and lighter hues reminiscent of flowing water. White Maple offers a subtler grain then Hickory or Oak and is usually finished in natural color tones for more neutral floor. It’s one of the most stable hardwoods and is in great demand for a variety of traditional and contemporary settings.
• Ash is a highly dense and durable wood with a bit more flair than Oak. The meandering grain of an Ash plank takes stain very well, thanks to a lack of tannins. Ash floorboards will have variations of color from cream to light blonde to rich nutty brown hues.
• Birch floors offer dramatic beauty that is always in style. Known for its intriguing combination of color tones – from rich reddish-brown in the heartwood to blonde outer edges and warm amber portions – Birch features subtle grain that ranges from swirls to flamelike effects.
• Cherry is one of the most popular hardwoods, thanks to its deep lustrous red tones and subtle grain structure. Cherry floors will darken as the wood ages, maturing to a rich, burnished auburn color that is prized by homeowners and furniture makers everywhere.
• Hickory is one of the toughest hardwoods commonly used for flooring. It’s also incredibly handsome, with interesting grain patterns and hues that run from cocoa brown and beige to lighter blonde in the sapwood.
• Walnut is prized for its complex grain patterns and sumptuous chocolate hues with auburn undertones. Walnut works in virtually any design, from rustic kitchens to high-rise lofts to formal sitting rooms.
• Eastern White Pine features boards with dense grain and subtle knots, along with light hues that offer versatile finish capabilities.
• Heart Pine is hard as Oak and features a warm patina of rich colors that range from amber and pumpkin to darker, more modern hues.
• Hit or Miss Pine is treated with texturing techniques that give new planks the appearance of boards cut and milled at early sawmills.

Why Carlisle is #1 in quality stair treads

When you want the best wood for stair treads in the industry, Carlisle Wide Plank Floors is your premier source. For more than 50 years, we have painstakingly handcrafted wide plank floors and stair treads using time-honored processes and the finest raw materials available. Our artisan woodworkers are perfectionists who care about the details of your floor just as much as you do. From hand-selecting every plank and tread to obsessing over stain color and the nuance of a texture treatment, our craftsmen will fashion your floor in the same way we have created all our extraordinary surfaces: one plank at a time.

Our commitment to quality flooring is rivaled only by our dedication to customer service. When you work with a Carlisle design consultant, you’ll be amazed by the level of expertise they bring to every endeavor. From your first contact with our team through the final coat of finish on your floor and stair treads, our wide plank specialists will be with you every step of the way to answer questions and offer expert guidance.