Hello, we are reno-ing our house and had new white oak stairs put in. We chose to have the stringers in poplar thinking we were going to paint them the same colour as the wall. Now seeing the stairs in place, we regret not choosing white oak stringers since we are loving the wood look. We plan to clear coat the white oak and could continue with the plan to paint the stringers, but I started thinking about how we could keep the wood look of the stringers too. I've read how poplar can appear green-ish with a clear coat on it, so I was wondering about using something like Minwax Simply White Stain, or Bona HD Raw or Bona Nordicseal to give it just a hint of white without it being full on opaque white paint. (The walls will be white/cream.)

Does anyone have any thoughts/experience on options we could do or what we should avoid doing?