Staircase Design Inspirations

Something out of the ordinary

I received a very interesting email today about strange and unusual staircases. I thought to myself as I opened it, how unusual could they be? Some of them were downright cool, and others I think I would kill myself on trying to climb or descend, and they certainly wouldn't be a good idea if you like to take a nip or two or three.

Most of stair design would fall under the category of 'not for people who entertain a lot', but I guess if you could afford the expense of building one of these masterpieces, I suppose you could afford the liability insurance if one of your guests missed a step or two.

Almost everyone has seen wood staircase designs, and spiral stairways, but honestly, these babies take the cake! There are metal staircases and loft staircases and space saver staircases...and some of them actually fit into more than one category, but I will let the pictures speak for themselves.

Not for the faint of heart

While none of the modern staircase design that are pictured here are for the faint of heart, some are definitely worse than others!

This little gem might be a bit tough to navigate if you have had one-too-many nightcaps. It would be hard enough to climb sober, and worse if you had a tendency of seeing double.

The trip up wouldn't be so bad, but somehow, I can't see me, lost in thought and climbing down these puppies on auto-pilot, never mind for a middle of the night potty trip!

Even though there appears to be a set of pretty skookum handrails, I can already feel the skin being scraped off the insides of my calves each time I get too close to the edge.

Space savers

Now these space saver stairs are a tad more climber friendly. There is a decent handrail to hang onto and they are a normal width, unlike the set above. The only downside I can see to these would be if my son were to look for something and get distracted before closing the drawer....

I can easily picture an interior staircase design ideas few stubbed toes and ankle bites, not to mention drawer repairs from stepping through the bottom of it, ripping it off its rails, or kicking the face plate off in the dark, (depending on which way you were going at the time!) This set would be perfect for the person who has an elephant's memory. Definitely not for people like me!

Loft staircase

I had to look at these a couple of times before I could make sense out of their structure. (Maybe it's just me...) Once I figured them out, with the help of the second picture showing the 'up' view, I thought they rather looked like boxes stacked haphazardly on top of one another. Not exactly my ideal thought when climbing them.

The 'down' picture had me puzzled for a while. For the life of me, I couldn't see how I would be able to climb them, as my feet would just keep slipping down the slopes. (In my defense, I did write this fairly late at night.) Either way, this model is certainly not for me, for many of the reasons I stated with a few of the preceding sets.

You would need to have very good balance the staircase design ideas to take these at a run - something I don't have in spades.