From time to time, we hear a variation of this question: I want to put wood treads on my stairs leading to the basement. I heard wood is slippery. Is it? Which type would you recommend? I was wondering which would make them less slippery stain or polyurethane. Please advise me. Thank you.
To answer that question, we've really haven't found our stair treads to be slippery once installed. Granted, if someone was to run down them in socks or stockinged feet, they would probably be a little slicker than carpeted stairs but folks are typically a little more careful around stairs than in a wide open room. The handrail in a staircase also provides something to grasp while traveling up or down the steps and adds to one's stability but even without it, we really haven’t heard of any issues with the wood stairs being an issue in regards to slipperiness. In reality, we've found carpet to be slippery once it starts to wear and wood steps will outlast carpet by many factors before it starts to wear.
Whether stained stairs are more or less slippery than just clear polyed stairs is really irrelevant because both will have the polyurethane, or in our case, Diamond Coat, applied. The stain is actually applied under the final coating to change the color of the wood whereas with natural or clear finished steps, the top-coat is applied right on top of the raw wood.
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