Fitting stairs into your home is about more than just choosing a stunning design and buying them. Of course, if you take a look here you’ll see some fantastic ideas for replacing your stairs or even fitting stairs in your new home.
But, before you can select your stairs you need to know how do you calculate staircase design. If you don’t do this properly you’ll end up with stairs that don’t fit or ones that are an impossibly steep angle.
Check Regulations
The first step is to verify the regulations regarding stairs, their height, angle, and other dimensions. You’ll need to check the rules for your specific location but these will give you a good starting point.
Height First
You’re now ready to measure the height of your stairs; this is also referred to as the rise. You’ll need to measure from your floor to your ceiling. You then need to allow for the width of your upstairs floor and add this figure on.
This will tell you how high the stairs need to go to get you from floor to floor.
Get Stair Numbers
The next step is to take 6 feet off your measurement. This is to allow you enough head space as you climb the stairs. If your house is full of tall people you may want to subtract 7 feet.
The resulting figure is your rise and this should be divided by 6 to get the number of stairs you need in your staircase. If your stairs are going to be smaller than average you can divide the rise by 7.
Stair Rise
If you take your rise number and divide this by the number of stairs you think you need you’ll find out what the rise height is. This is the size of the step up you’ll need to take to climb the stairs.
You may need to check your local regulations again to confirm the stair rise height is acceptable.
Length Of Stairs
If you take the number of stairs and multiply this by 9 you’ll have the total length of the stairs. It is recommended that every stair is 9 or even 10 inches deep.
Therefore if you have 7 stairs you should multiply this by 9. The answer of 63” is how much floor space your stairs will take up.
Width
Ideally, you should plan for each stair to be at least 36 inches wide. This will ensure two people can pass each other if necessary or you can carry furniture up and down. However; this figure can be made narrower or wider according to the space you have available.
The Figures
You’ll need to know these figures to establish of you have the space for your stairs. You can opt for a straight design but if you have limited room for the length of the stairs you may prefer to add a corner in or even a small landing and send the stairs back on yourself.
Knowing this will help you to choose the right design for the space you have available.