What the closest choice to substitute for Tile Stairs?

Question

Our home is designed to be a modern home style. There's a lot of glasses. The theme of our home is glass, white, and chrome. All door knobs and handles will be chrome, there will be lots of windows and white tile floor .. etc. Our architecture chose our tile for the stairs with glass railing. Tile stairs is kind of costly for us. My question is that are there any other material that I can substitute to get the same look as tile stairs?

I forgot to mention that ... the 2nd floor is capet. And the 1st floor is tile.

Also the contractor mentioned that tile stairs is dangerous b/c it's slippery when it is wet or when you fall down your head may bang your head to the corner of it. To do the tile stairs the contractor charges $1900. This is not a remodeling but we are building our home from scratch. So, the contractor said that the inspector is very picky about tile stairs that every steps need to be measure to the exact requirement. And that's why is take more time to do and cost more.

Answer 1

If your home is both carpeted upstaris and down stairs, replace it with conformed color carpet. but if one floor is carpeted.. you should just leave it alone unless it's damaged. Other than that if you have tile flooring on one floor stick to same style tile. But if really want to spent money and your floors are both latter cases, you should go with stained polished oak which will enhance your flooring.

Answer 2

My suggestion would be:
Just have the Contractor give you the standard wooden stairs, then have a professional painter came in and paint it the same shade of white as your tiles. (they can use a sand grit in the paint, so it would be slippery, or wear out as fast) This would help cut some costs. Good Luck and happy building!

Answer 3

Go with standard oak type treads. They are safer and should you decide to sell later on you won't have as much trouble selling as you would with tile. You can stain the oak a light color to match the rest of the house.

Answer 4

by all means put a thin carpet without padding on the stairs you'll find many patterns to choose from. hey the first person that trips on the stairs will be glad its soft not hard.

Answer 5

get vinyl tile with fake grout lines, use the square type not the roll out.

Answer 6

You might see if there's laminate covering available (similar to laminate countertops). It doesn't look as good, but it's less expensive and it's durable.

-j.