Wood Selection

Masterpiece Staircase offers a wide selection of wood choices for most of your stair parts. While Red Oak has been the standard for a very long time, more and more homeowners and builders are moving away from Red Oak – branching into exotics like Cumaru, Jatoba (Brazilian Cherry), Tigerwood, and others. We also love the exotics, as well as American favorites like Walnut, Maple, and American Cherry. As woodworkers, we love to see the wood tell the story with color and texture, rather than having a dark stain on a bland wood.

Handrail

Although density and toughness are important factors in tread selection, it’s of much less importance when selecting handrail. Because handrail is not subjected to foot traffic, dogs, scratches, etc., the variety of woods that can be used is wide open. Most times the handrail species is chosen to match the treads and flooring, but we frequently see mixing and matching of complementary woods. (Such as White Oak treads and flooring with Mahogany handrail.)

Flooring Dictates

Often times the type of flooring material dictates the wood used on the stairs. As exotic flooring becomes more common, we are getting requests for very unique staircase materials. And the trend is not just for the extremely high-end homes, as we are seeing these stairs in more affordable homes as well

Stair Tread

While the choices are often endless, we like to steer clients into stair treads that are going to stand the test of time. While Spanish Cedar is a beautiful wood, it does not function well as a stair tread because of its light weight and low density – in other words it will get beat up quickly. One way to quickly see the sturdiness of your selection is by reading the Janka scale (located under Wood Hardness). The higher the score on the scale, the more abuse the wood can take without showing wear and tear.

Below you can see many of the woods we have available. However, just because you don’t see the wood you want listed doesn’t mean we cannot fabricate stairs in that species. There are countless other species that we have produced beautiful stairs from – just give us a contact us at jon@masterpiecestaircase.com and we can discuss your options.