To make the staircase the statement Matthew and his husband were after, Matthew bought some green tiles that caught his eye at Lowe’s. “I knew immediately what I was going to do with them,” he says. “Everyone thought the idea of tiling a staircase was crazy, but I told them to trust the process.”

And trust the process they did; Matthew’s husband and a friend, Sarah, actually installed the tile over a holiday break when Matthew had to work. And it seems the tile was truly meant to be, because not a single piece had to be cut to size! “The tiles across fit perfectly, and they were the exact height that we needed,” Matthew says. “The tile at first seems to make the biggest difference, but in my mind, as soon as the honey-colored wood tone was gone, the space immediately felt better,” Matthew says.