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Transform Stairs with Paint

Oct 06, 2025 | Posted in Inspirations | Share

Blue painted stairs with white railings and stringers with a hat on the newel post. A green trunk sits nearby with personal items on it, and a small mirror and art hang on the white wall going up the stairs. Warm wood flooring peeks out at the bottom of the staircase.
Design by Emily Henderson / Photo by Bjorn Wallender, courtesy Country Living

You’ve seen colorfully painted walls, floors, and even ceilings. What about painting stairs?

The example above reverses the basic “paint the railings dark and the stairs white” approach. What follows are some unusual ideas that progress the painted-stair design into new directions!

As seen from above, a country store-style staircase is painted with multiple signage logos such as Pepsi-Cola, Texaco, and Coca-Cola across one to two treads each logo.
Design by Funky Junk Interiors / Photo courtesy Lushome

A country store signage painted staircase, for a bit of fun while changing floors.

An optical illusion of polka dots floating in space is created by painting stairs and their surrounding walls with pink and white paint, including the door at the top of the stairs, and also revealing the wood color for some portions of the dots. Light beams from around the doorway.
Photo courtesy Lushome

This polka-dot stair illusion is amazing, leaving portions of the treads unpainted with the wood revealed, and the door painted to integrate into the vision. This would require a lot of calculations to execute!

A beautiful white painted staircase with beige center portion accented with 3 country-blue colored stripes up the middle, the center stripe being the biggest. A beige jug filled with green and white flowers sits atop a stack of books on the second step.
Photo by Leslee Mitchell, courtesy Country Living

A painted grain-sack inspired stair runner is good for country or city living. Simply stylish.

A staircase with dark wood treads and risers painted white, with aqua blue numbers from 1 to 10 on the risers going upwards. In the background, shelves filled with vases, books, and collectibles are slightly out of focus to the left of the stairs, behind the railings that ends in a circle of rails at the bottom step.
Photo by Lucas Allen, courtesy Country Living

Teach your kids their numbers by going up and down stairs.  This North Carolina home uses aqua-painted brass house numbers to label their stair treads.

A staircase at a slight angle in the photo starts with dark treads at the bottom, gradually lightening the colors through shades of blue and turquoise, rising to a pale blue at the top where the stair turns to the left. This graduated change in color is called ombré. The treads themselves are all painted white, as are the surrounding walls. The stringers are painted a solid turquoise blue to harmonize the colors.
Photo courtesy Shef Sutton

This fun ombré stair tread is something I would suggest to my clients who love color.

Kimball Starr specializes in designing colorful homes throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and Lake Tahoe. Contact her today for a remote or in-person consultation.

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