Stairs and landings are rooms that nobody counts

This looks at stairs and landings from the practical end — what holds up once conditions stop being ideal.

The area is larger than people assume

A staircase plus its landings above and below typically consumes several square metres on two floors, comparable to a small bedroom. It is also the space every person in the house passes through many times a day, which is a higher utilisation than any room. Treating it as circulation to be got through, rather than as a place, is why it usually contains nothing and looks unfinished.

Small interventions here are noticed more often than expensive ones in a bedroom.

Lighting a flight is about the edges

What the eye needs on a stair is the contrast at the nosing of each tread, not overall brightness. A light at the top casting light down the flight illuminates the risers and leaves the treads readable; a light at the bottom does the opposite and works less well. Two-way switching at both ends is a basic requirement and its absence is a daily irritation in older houses.

Underneath it, a low-level light left on overnight is the cheapest safety improvement in a house with children or older adults.

Landings can hold something

A landing with about six hundred millimetres of depth beyond the required circulation can take a shallow bookcase, a chair, a desk or a chest of drawers. A window on a landing with somewhere to sit converts a corridor into somewhere people stop, which changes how the whole floor reads.

Anything placed there must not obstruct the escape route, and in many countries the route from bedrooms to the exit has specific requirements. Shallow depth is the constraint, which is why joinery built to the space usually beats bought furniture here.

Handrails and balustrades are regulated

Rise, going, headroom, handrail height and the gap a sphere can pass through in a balustrade are all specified in building regulations in most countries, and the figures differ. Regulations generally apply to new and altered staircases rather than retrospectively to existing ones, which is why old houses have steep stairs that could not be built today. Altering a staircase, moving it or changing a balustrade is work where the local rules should be checked before design, not after.

Where children or older adults are involved, meeting the current standard is worth doing even where an existing stair is exempt.

Sound and the stair core

A staircase is an open vertical duct connecting floors, which is why conversation, television and doors carry between levels. A carpeted stair is dramatically quieter than a bare timber one, both underfoot and as a reflector. A door at the top or bottom of a flight, common in older houses and often removed, does a great deal for both sound and heat.

Where the stair rises into an open landing, soft finishes on the landing itself do more than treatments on the stair.

Anything structural belongs with a qualified professional, not an article.

Understairs is the most wasted volume

The space under a straight flight is usually a deep dark cupboard where things are put and never found again. Pull-out drawers on runners, shallow full-height storage, or a small study or utility use the volume far better than a door into a triangle. The triangular geometry means bespoke joinery genuinely outperforms anything bought, and it is one of the better uses of a joiner.

Check first whether the space is part of a protected escape route, because in many countries that restricts what may be stored or built there.

The takeaway

Light the tread edges, use the landing depth, and open up the triangle under the flight.

Buy slowly. The gaps are not a problem.