I think dark risers and white treads is a very classic look. I have heard about the additive but never tried it. I've always been told that carpet is far more slippy than bare wood stairs.

The link is to the stair gallery section on the decorating forum. There are lots of examples there.

Hope this helps!

Here is a link that might be useful: stair gallery

Thanks for the link! What I'll be doing, though, is not the dark stained tread and white riser... I am planning on having the riser painted white and the tread part (that you typically see stained) painted another color (likely a shade of green, to match our living room walls).

I can't find photos of that look and was wondering if anyone on here has their stairs like that - painted 2 colors?

Thoughts?

You might run this by the old house forum as they were pretty common on older period homes, at least in New England when I worked back there.