We pulled up the carpet from our home and replaced it with a "hardwood" tile throughout. Including the stairs. Almost immediately we regretting not having padded carpet on the stairs. It's just not comfy to walk on. Not to mention how unforgiving tile is to fall on (God forbid!).I decided to add a carpet runner with padding to soften the look as well as the steps. My research showed the stair rods help to keep the runner in place. I looked at Lowes and Home Depot but the selection was very limited and they didn't have the wider length I needed. I found these on Amazon. They were more expensive, but they were exactly what I needed. When I received them I realized they are much higher quality than the ones I found at Lowes and Home Depot. That made me feel even better about paying the higher price.They look wonderful. After a few years, I'm sure I'll have to replace the runner with a new one. That's the beauty of a stair runner vs wall-to-wall carpet. It's inexpensive to replace. My days of trying to clean carpeted stairs are over! The stair rods are easily removed to take away the old runner and easily reinserted once the new one is in place.

I purchased this to hold the carpet on the bottom step of carpeted staircase that meets a wooden floor. The bar was longer than I wanted, but I was able to cut it to length and the ends are contained in the end caps to that portion of the finish at the cut doesn't show. The end caps are solid and work and look nice.