Help, my stairs are yellow!

[Bonkers2011]

Hi, i hope someone can help.
I removed the carpet from my stairs and i thought it would be a good idea to varnish the treads.
It took me such a long time to remove old paint and prepare them. I then chose ronseal medium oak floor varnish. I tried on one step and it was far too dark. So i bought antique pine and my tester step looked good.
So i varnished the whole lot. I am so upset with how they look.
Does anyone have any advice?

I think a better approach is a nice whitewash. Varnish is very dated....all you can do is strip them and start again.

Thank you, i never considered whitewash i will have a look into this. The stairs are open tread.

If I were you I would live with it for a while, maybe a month or two, as it is likely that the wood will darken now it is exposed to light. If after that time you still don't like it then have a rethink.

I'd redo them white, too. All natural pine varnish eventually turns orange, it's really vile.

I have just looked at a few pictures of whitewashed stairs and they look lovely. At the moment i have laminate down stairs. I think the white wash will work better with this.

Yes, whitewash looks lovely and fresh. You can do it yourself quite easily too...there are lots of tutorials on Youtube OP.

Thank you, i have been looking into how to do this. I didn't think to look at you tube.

if you don't want to remove the varnish and start again you can get varnish in a whitewash colour. ronseal do one. just add a coat or 2 to the existing varnish.

Weve painted our stairs with an off white tread and different coloured risers using the colours left over from the rest of the house - subtle F & B colours, greens, yellows and blues. Looks lovely. Ive seen some done with wallpaper on the risers as well. Google painted stairs/images.