Tread material is the decision people spend the longest on and get the least useful advice about. Here is how each one behaves once it is on a steel stringer and being walked on every day.
Solid hardwood
The default, and for good reason. Warm underfoot, quiet, repairable, and it can be colour matched to flooring you already own. We mill ours from Canadian lumber — white oak, red oak and walnut most often — at anything from 2.25 to 5 inches thick.
Thickness is not only structural. A thicker tread reads as a heavier, more solid stair, which is usually what people are reacting to when they say a staircase looks expensive. On an open riser the edge is on display from every angle, so this is the one place we would spend before anywhere else.
Marble and natural stone
Beautiful, and four times the weight of timber at the same thickness. That changes the stringer, the fixings and sometimes the floor build, which is why stone has to be decided early rather than swapped in later.
On a curved flight the veining should run continuously from the bottom step to the top, which means cutting every tread in sequence from a single block rather than buying slabs. Honed is more forgiving underfoot than polished. In a front hall with a dog and three children, we would say so.
Quartz
Engineered stone. It gives you the look of marble with consistent colour, no surprise veining and considerably better stain resistance. It does not have the depth of real stone under a raking light, and people who love marble notice. People who wanted marble without the maintenance usually do not.
Laminated glass
Used where the point is that you can see through the stair. Structural laminated glass with a slip-resistant surface, engineered per tread for the span and the load. It is the most demanding option to detail and the most striking in the right building. It shows every footprint, which matters more in a house than in a showroom.
Epoxy and resin over wood
A modern option that lets colour, metal leaf or lighting sit inside the tread itself. Very durable and very distinctive. We build it where a client wants something that is unmistakably theirs and has seen enough of everything else.
The short version
Warmth and repairability — hardwood.
Presence and permanence — marble, if the structure is designed for it from the start.
The marble look, less upkeep — quartz.
Transparency — laminated glass, in the right room.
Thinking about a staircase?
Send your opening dimensions, floor-to-floor height and a photo. We come back with architectural shop drawings, three realistic 3D renderings and a firm price.