Walk into any Toronto home built before 2000 and chances are, the stairs tell a story. Twenty-three years of feet going up and down. Kids dragging backpacks. Dogs scrambling for the door. That beautiful oak that looked so good in 1998? Now it’s scratched, faded, and making your whole house look tired.
Paint Lions has been doing stairs staining and refinishing across Toronto since 2023. From Victorian rowhouses in Cabbagetown to modern builds in Liberty Village, we’ve brought hundreds of staircases back to life. The thing about Toronto stairs? They’re not like suburban stairs. Narrow hallways, old houses where nothing’s square, condos with strict building rules – every job has its quirks.
Whether you need new construction stairs stained in your Junction renovation or you’re refinishing that worn pine staircase in your Danforth home, we know exactly how to handle it. Toronto’s wild temperature swings – from humid July to bone-dry January – demand specific products and techniques. We’ve figured out what works.
Why Toronto Homeowners Choose Paint Lions
Last month, a couple in High Park showed us photos from another company’s work. The stain didn’t match their floors – at all. Different undertones, wrong shade, looked like two separate houses. Worse? Drips on the walls, fingerprints in the finish, tape marks everywhere. They paid $4,000 for that mess.
Here’s what most people don’t get – stairs staining isn’t just about slapping on color. When you want white stringers and risers with stained treads (the most popular look right now), you need someone who actually knows how to paint. Flooring guys can stain wood, sure. But painting clean, crisp lines? That’s a different skill entirely.
We’ve seen it over and over in Toronto homes. Thick caulking lines that look amateur. Paint bleeding onto the stained parts. White that’s not quite white because it wasn’t primed right. Your stairs are the first thing people see when they walk in. Bad work ruins the whole impression.
New Stairs Staining in Toronto
Renovating in Toronto? Adding a second floor? Building that laneway suite everyone’s doing now? Your new stairs deserve a finish that matches your vision and holds up to real life.
We recently finished a Leslieville renovation where they’d opened up the staircase to the main floor. The homeowner wanted that modern look – white stringers, natural oak treads with a matte finish. It completely transformed the space. Made their whole house feel bigger and brighter.
New construction stairs are actually easier to work with in some ways – no old finish to remove, no damage to repair. But the staining has to be perfect because everything else is fresh. Any mistakes stand out immediately.
Stairs Refinishing in Toronto
Got an older Toronto home? Those stairs have character – and probably some battle scars too. Gouges from moving furniture up narrow hallways. Worn spots where millions of footsteps have landed. That orange-ish finish that was trendy in 1985.
A family in Riverdale called us about their pine stairs. Bought the house five years ago, always meant to fix the stairs, kept putting it off. When they finally decided to sell, their realtor said the stairs were killing their value. We refinished them in four days. House sold for $40,000 over asking. The realtor told them the stairs were a major factor.
Refinishing brings old stairs back to life. We strip off the old finish, sand everything smooth, fix any damage, then apply fresh stain and protective coating. It’s like getting brand new stairs for a fraction of the cost.
