How to make stairs light: 9 design solutions to create an “airy” effect

one Cantilever steps

Com­pact stairs of this type do not have any “extra” details — only steps, more­over, attached to the sup­port (wall, pil­lar, col­umn) with only one end, while the sec­ond one seems to rest on air. Such struc­tures are dif­fi­cult to man­u­fac­ture, and in some cas­es, the imple­men­ta­tion of the stair­case project should begin at the stage of lay­ing the walls: steps made of durable mate­r­i­al, such as rein­forced con­crete, are par­tial­ly embed­ded in the mason­ry, rein­forced with rein­forc­ing mesh or rods. Oth­er options are anchor­ing steel brack­ets or fab­ri­cat­ing a weld­ed frame; these meth­ods are even more time-con­sum­ing, but they are real­iz­able in an already built house.

Pho­to: Ediko

Pho­to: Ediko

Pho­to: EuroScala

Pho­to: EuroScala

2 Steel stringers

The tra­di­tion­al mate­r­i­al for stringers (bear­ing beams of stairs) is a wide board made of glued wood. If you replace wood with met­al, you can change the shape of this part (make it in the form of a bro­ken line) and sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce the cross-sec­tion­al area. As a result, the stair­case will turn out to be much more ele­gant with­out sac­ri­fic­ing strength.

Pho­to: Alfa Design

Pho­to: Alfa Design

Pho­to: Alfa Design

3 Central kosour

Today it is an extreme­ly pop­u­lar type of stair beam. Such a kosour con­sists of Z‑shaped parts and can be either weld­ed or pre­fab­ri­cat­ed. With pre­fab­ri­cat­ed stairs of this type, you can arbi­trar­i­ly change the direc­tion of the march and adjust its height by attach­ing addi­tion­al mod­ules. The cen­tral kosour needs to be sup­port­ed by a pil­lar and / or addi­tion­al­ly strength­en the struc­ture, for exam­ple, with tie bolts.

Pho­to: Mobiro­lo

Pho­to: Mobiro­lo

Pho­to: Mobiro­lo

four Boltsy

This is the name of the fas­ten­ers that con­nect the steps with each oth­er into a sin­gle pow­er struc­ture. They allow you to stiff­en the stairs on the con­soles, pil­lar and cen­tral sup­port beam. The bolt con­sists of a bolt, a spac­er and a nut. Often, in the form of bolts, the low­er part of the fence posts is made.

Pho­to: Albi­ni Fontan­ot

Pho­to: Albi­ni Fontan­ot

Pho­to: Albi­ni Fontan­ot

5 glass steps

They are made of lam­i­nat­ed tem­pered glass with a total thick­ness of at least 16 mm. Glass steps are extreme­ly spec­tac­u­lar, but they lack anti-slip prop­er­ties and are extreme­ly expen­sive (almost an order of mag­ni­tude more expen­sive than wood­en ones). You can order such struc­tures only from com­pa­nies with many years of expe­ri­ence in their pro­duc­tion and assem­bly.

Pho­to: EuroScala

6 Spiral and screw marches

Twist­ed stairs take up much less space than tra­di­tion­al straight ones, but in order to make it con­ve­nient to move along them, the height of the ris­er should not exceed 17 cm, and the width of the tread in its widest part should be at least 24 cm.

Pho­to: Our Stair­case

Pho­to: Our Stair­case

Pho­to: Alta Design

7 Transparent fence

It is made from flat or curved (radius) sheets of lam­i­nat­ed glass. These screens, if prop­er­ly installed, are extreme­ly safe and are per­fect for homes with small chil­dren. In addi­tion, they are able to per­form the func­tion of bolts and stiff­en the march. The dis­ad­van­tages of glass screens are the high price and the need for reg­u­lar main­te­nance.

Pho­to: EuroScala

eight string fencing

Rail­ings made of steel posts and strings are no less ele­gant than glass, and are much cheap­er. To com­ply with safe­ty stan­dards, the low­er hor­i­zon­tal cable must be locat­ed no more than 150 mm from the lev­el of the step; the opti­mal dis­tance between the posts is also 150 mm.

Pho­to: Albi­ni Fontan­ot

9 Openwork forged railings

Such a fence, although it has a sig­nif­i­cant mass, looks almost weight­less and at the same time is able to give visu­al light­ness even to a mono­lith­ic con­crete march. Pati­nat­ed met­al goes well with wood and nat­ur­al stone, as well as stained glass.

Pho­to: CM Square