You don’t have to live in a stately home to make a statement with your staircase; increasingly, more and more people are becoming more adventurous with their escalier. Part of this trend is being driven by the desire to make the most of a small space, and the right choice of staircase can help to make the ascent to the upper floor of your home a little less steep, if you originally had a flight of stairs with fairly high risers and shallow treads.
However, sometimes people just want something that looks right in their home – whether that means a traditional design, or something more contemporary.
Staircases for traditional homes
Timber staircases are a great option for homes with fairly traditional interior design schemes – they never go out of fashion, they can be stained or painted to suit your tastes, and they’re easy to have built to fit a specific space.
As mentioned above, if you’re working with a fairly compact area, and your existing staircase is quite steep, you can overcome this.
Simply consider adding a turn at the top, bottom, or both ends of your stairs – the extra couple of steps effectively lengthens the flight without taking up much extra space.
This introduces additional steps, allowing each riser to be made a little lower, and potentially increasing the depth of the treads too.
It’s a technique that is used to good effect in many homes, but which, until you see it in action, can be difficult to imagine working within the same amount of space as your existing stairs.
Staircases for modern homes
Just because your home has a modern look and feel to it, it doesn’t mean you have to use stark materials like metal and glass in your fixtures and fittings.
Wood can be just as at home in a modern property as in one that is designed to traditional tastes; as mentioned above, it is a material that never really goes out of fashion, making it versatile for any interior scheme.
Popular contemporary staircase designs include open elements – it is common practice now to have one side of your staircase open, whereas many homes in the mid-20th century would have had walls on both sides of the stairs.
Consider having open risers too, though – this can create a sense of space and allow you to see through your stairs to the floor below, as long as you’re confident that they will not represent a trip hazard to any young children or elderly relatives.
Sensational statements
If you’re a proponent of the concept of ‘go large or go home’, you might want to go for something even more outlandish than a contemporary staircase design.
A spiral staircase, for instance, is a stunning addition to a loft apartment with the bedroom on a mezzanine level, or to any building where space is at a premium.
If you’re feeling really adventurous, you could take inspiration from the modern offices of some of the world’s biggest digital brands – and add a fireman’s pole or helter skelter as a speedy means of getting back downstairs.
