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We live in a tall, 4-storey house, so flights of stairs are integral to our daily lives. They needn’t just be a way to get up and down. Here are a few useful staircase ideas for small homes or simply to make the most of an often under-utilised area of the house.

Save on space

You must take care of the railings to add security! Nothing can beat tempered glass railing for stairs, as they’re perfect to add a little more illusion of bigger spaces and add a bit more lighting.

If the rooms in your house are on the compact side, remove the traditional stairway and replace it with a spiral staircase such as those available at Fontanot Shop. A spiral staircase has a much smaller footprint than most other types of stairways, giving you extra, much needed floor space for furniture and appliances. They’re also architecturally interesting and can give real impact to a room.

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Another great tip to reduce a staircase footprint is to install stair treads instead of conventional steps in narrow, steep stairways such as up to loft conversions. You walk up them in just the same way, and you’ll quickly get accustomed to their slightly unusual structure. In fact, your feet probably only use half of your own traditional staircase as it is!

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Storage solutions

When you’re furnishing a small house, it’s all about making the most of the limited space. If you don’t need something constantly to hand, store it away. The stairs are a handy but often overlooked storage area with cupboards or shelves easily installed – perfect for cleaning materials, toys, coats and wellies.

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They’re great for display too, with lots of potential to show off your books, photos or collections of glass and pottery.

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Actual in-stair drawers are a really ingenious way to store all manner of items depending on which rooms the stairs link – for example, folded clothes and shoes in the bedroom area… a superb use of otherwise dead space.

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If your stairs are wide enough, get yourself one of those specially shaped baskets that are kept on the stairs. If you’re anything like us, you’ll often have things sitting on the bottom stairs downstairs waiting for someone to take them to their rightful place somewhere upstairs. An on-stair basket is a much prettier and neater solution to random piles of ‘stuff’.

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Get green fingered

Often, a small house means that there’s also a small garden on the outside. Expand your growing space by cultivating plants, flowers or even herbs and vegetables in the blank areas such as beside and under the stairs or along the handrail and on the newel post. Common sense dictates that safety be the foremost consideration; don’t put things in the way of getting up & down the stairs in one piece!

Gain an extra room

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If you can afford it, you can simply move to somewhere such as kingdom valley if you need extra room. If not, you need to be more creative. For example, fit a home office into the angled area under your stairs. There are no legal restrictions on the width of a stairway however, they’re usually between 600mm and 900mm wide – plenty deep enough to fit a desk with a chair that slides beneath.

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If that awkward under-stair area is in your kitchen, how about you put up some shelves along 3 sides? Voilà… you have yourself a new larder area!

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If you’re lucky enough to have a home with tall ceilings, install a staircase and create a mezzanine where you can fit a platform sleeping or lounge area. Getting a bed up off the ground frees up 6^ft x 3^ft of floor space (or even a 6^ft x 6^ft area if you have a king-size bed).

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Express your artistic side

Paint, stencil or wallpaper the stair risers. It’s a funky, unique option that doesn’t cost too much or take that much time to achieve. And you can probably use bits & bobs of leftover decorating materials that you already have to hand.

You may also consider adding some custom ornaments to your stairs during certain festivals. For example these wind chimes from gs-jj.com with custom patterns, you can hang them on the stair railing, you can customise different patterns according to different festivals, they’re all metal and can be reused again and again.

As you can see, the under-stairs space really is full of potential. We hope we’ve given you some practical ideas so that it will be a general dumping ground no more!

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