I agree the stairs are lovely and that any of the options would look nice–walnut, wrought iron, white to match walls, or white oak to match the other floors in the house.
Or black to match the doors?
Right - my thoughts too!
If you put on railings with curved ends, make sure they can’t catch your clothes! I’ve managed to rip pockets just on door handles.
I am required by code to have returns at top and bottom of rail to avoid catching clothes or something at the ends of rail. But they can curl down or into wall. Probably safer into wall.
I have many choices.
One possibility is to splurge slightly on antique decorative rail holders in dark bronze or black with painted white or dark paint wood rails ( least expensive), walnut (most expensive) or wrought iron (middle)
My opinion only. While a lighter color to match the walls might look nice…think about that one. We had a handrail painted to match the walls in one house…and it was always needing to be cleaned. It was used, and the hand dirt (and believe me…we don’t walk around with dirty hands) just added up. I finally got sick of it, and painted them darker.
Sure, I still needed to wash them…but at least I wasn’t looking at smudges all the time.
But that won’t be cb’s problem. 
I just purchasedd 8 antique black iron wall brackets for the handrail. I’m going to have the detail in the brackets themselves. After they arrive I will hold up several handrail ideas and decide.
They look like this and are true to the period and style of the house
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Stair-Hand-Rail-Bracket-Black-Cast-Renovators-Supply-/182341433859?hash=item2a74657a03:g:-UQAAOSwOyJX80GH
Lovely!!
The detail reminds me of the Arabesque tile shape. Perfect!
CB, being on a house hunt, I can tell that I love the fact that you updated this house so tastefully while keeping both its original character and charm! I am so sick of looking at newer construction or flips that all looks like the houses came off a giant conveyor belt: those glass panel garage doors, white kitchen cabinets and mega-Wolf ovens, so many bathrooms all looking identical… and one would need a maid to keep the places in decent shape… Too bad we are not in San Diego!
I love the iron brackets. My handrails are white and I don’t find them hard to keep clean.
I also agree with BunsenBurner. I look occasionally in 2 areas of Ca and I see the same updates over and over. I can tell a flip now just from looking at the the first few photos. I next look at the sales history and yup it was sold several months back.
I wish I purchased a few months earlier!! This will be a year in the making by the time I close escrow. And that’s only if I can sell by end of December which is not likely
I love the brackets.
Those cookie cutter flips probably also had those awful white dining room chairs in the staging
I think that a rail painted to match the trim would look good in the stairway, especially using those brackets. I’m a little concerned that a walnut rail would be too obtrusive in that space.
How did you guess, thumper?! 
They all also have gawdawful metal stools by the kitchen islands.
And I’m willing to bet that some space, either the kitchen or the bathrooms, features those horizontal tile mosaics.
BTW, I would love to have a kitchen with white cabinets and a Wolf stove. 
Consolation, yes, those flippers and builders all shop the same tile isle at HD. It is not even funny.
Now, the stagers! I looked at one house online… Laughed outloud. The closet was perfectly staged with Gucci and LV boxes and shopping bags… the price ended in 8… Chinese buyers targeted.
Chinese buyers are not a thing here in Maine!
This is funny! I just “unsubscribed” from getting Wayfair emails. Guess what was in the picture??
Those white dining room chairs!
My agent has found a couple of local interior design firms that have some inventory that are coming to meet at the house tomorrow. She’s hoping that she can get them to stage and design just the living and dining room and a nice outdoor table and chairs. The Everything Creative staging company just replied that they will not stage a house if there is another stager doing other rooms. Also, they were hesitant to send any pictures of inventory that they were going to use
So far all we have nailed is the low cost company doing 3 bedrooms and staging the middle bedroom as an office with some minor decor in the bathrooms.
My agent started calling me (while I was outside trying to load the truck in the rain) with an idea that she was just going to buy all the furniture and then sell it later. All I could think about is that this was somehow going to end up on my plate and I would be driving all over the place because ‘I have the truck’ and taking all my guys off task to unload and stage furniture. This has happened before and they just roll their eyes when we stand there and go “can you please move that 3 more inches to the left?”
And in the end we will probably be staring at those dang white vinyl dining chairs trying to figure out how that happened to us