Have you painted your stairs? How did it work out?

[Zinxie]

I have a wooden staircase that either needs some restaining, or maybe painting. I've not painted stairs before, and am wondering about wear and tear, paint durability, possible use of several coats of varnish, etc?

I'd be more bothered about the racket without carpet or a runner every time someone uses the stairs.

Yy, wow. The thing is, the stairs are currently not carpeted, and never have been. It's a second staircase going up to the loft.

I don't want to have to hoover them, tbh! I just quickly use a wood wipe on them! so much easier than lugging the Hoover around. Much quicker too.

Ours are painted, it's not overly noisy and I give them a wash once a month or so. Just used an acrylic gloss on them and gave them a few hours to dry but did prime first with B&Q value primer.

We've got a staircase going to the loft painted. Whitish acrylic satin.
Not too noisy as they're not used loads but they show every speck of dust.

Think we'll have a runner eventually.

Watching with interest
I've got varnished stairs and I love them.
They are not noisy at all
But I would like to strip them andvvarnish them a different colour. I'm not a big fan of orange pine
I wonder how easy it would be get them stripped and how long would the varnish take to dry
We have a downstairs loo but I don't want to be stranded downstairs

I assumed that there would be a lot of chipping of just ordinary paint.

Rather pleased by the input so far, Thankyou.

Insancerre, get a black and decker mouse, sand them, every other one, and stain em one day. Do the alternate stairs the next day, so you can use the stairs for the four hours or so the stain takes to dry. Itd be quite easy.

No chipping on the main stairs apart from when we dragged a cast iron bath up them. The loft stairs are pretty immaculate and they've been painted for six months and completely ignored. We're not light footed either, several small children and lots of visitors and cats.

Thanks, I didn't think of doing alternate stairs
That would be so much easier

my husband has just done our stairs in a small victorian cottage and we have done the tread in off-white to match the rest of the woodwork but used different pastel shades for the risers (using up all the old hits of paint from the rest of the house) and it looks FAB! We have a dog so it gets hairy but I keep a duster nearby and just every now and then dust the stairs down of the hair and dust and then wash - again with a damp cloth - about once a week depending on how they look. We do try not to use outdoor shoes on them for the most part. I think hubby did put 3 coats of clear varnish on as well. Not sure how long they will look pristine but I favour the shabby chic look anyway.................

bilbodog I love the sound of that. If you felt you could upload a pic, that would be lovely.

I'm thinking now of painting the stairs and then the rises a different colour, and then perhaps adding some stair treads.

IS it better to have pale stairs, or dark, in terms of showing dust etc?

I like the idea of deep inky blue stairs with stone colour rises, for example, and white woodwork.

But I really don't want to be wiping the stairs all the time! We have cats!

What varnish did he use, do you know? I've been searching here on MN the afternoon and read about not layering water based with oil based.

I did ours with normal emulsion and they looked great but were a tad slippery.

Slippery does sound very bad, and to be avoided!

SIL did hers white but they looked dirty ALL the time.

They eventually put a runner up.

We have just painted our bedroom floor a slightly lighter shade of grey than before and it definitely shows fluff and hairs (I have long hair) more than before. Possibly dark treads and white risers could work?

Dark stained and varnished treads with strong white FB risers here... The floorboards off the top step will also be strong white though not done yet that way as stairs are used so much it won't get too dirty....

I will Ali be putting a middle runner up

I think if you use a good quality off white floor paint like f&b it is more hard wearing and not slippery if you want painted... I stress good quality I've done floorboards in f&b strong white and dulux white both special floor paints ... I hate to say it (because it was a lot for a tin of paint!) but F&b wins hands down!

Also do not use plain white always go for off white tone

Bad grammar

Do Not Paint Yourself Into The Middle Of The Stairs.

Just saying. Not that I did that. Oh no. Not me

Beauty

zinxie - not very good at uploading pictures but if you GOOGLE painted s tairs and look at images there are a number of different examples - some people have even stencilled them to look like oriental rugs - which I was tempted to do but we decided to keep things simpler.