Will I paint or stain new stairs?

We have stairs in our new extension winding down from a birch wood floored sunroom to a terracota tiled utility room both of which have cream walls. The stairs are white deal with spindles and closed steps. I don't want them to detract from the birch wood floor by varnishing them, so I want to paint them white or nearly white and use brown Micostep (www.stairtread-micostep.co.uk in case you don't know what these are) stair protectors, with a walnut stained handrail. Husband thinks the white stairs will look dirty and wants to stain-varnish the lot.





Any comments please?Will I paint or stain new stairs?
Do not paint you will regret it but use either a satin or matt finish varnish...not a stain. This will bring out the grain in the wood and it will look much better than either paint or stain. Try it then later on if you do not like it you can always change it, but if you paint or stain and dislike it...hard work and expensive to rectify.








Own experience.Will I paint or stain new stairs?
Paint will not hold up for a long time on stairs but is easy to renew. White is tough to keep looking clean on something you walk on.
if you stain them first you can always paint over them, if you paint them no matter what you do you can never get the paint out of the grain! i'll let you decided