When it comes to designing and decorating your home, it’s natural to want to focus on making each room reflect your character. That doesn’t, however, mean that you should neglect the connecting areas of your house e.g. the hallways, corridors and stairs. In fact, with a little bit of creative thinking, you can turn your stairs into a stunning feature in their own right. Here are some decorating tips to inspire you…
Stripped back to the wood
The trend in interior design is very much towards wood – either stripped and varnished or painted. This gives you lots of scope to be innovative with your stairs, such as:
- Mixing dark with light – A deep and rich varnish like dark oak for the stairs works great if you use clear varnish for the risers. This style breaks up the stairs and makes them stand out without looking too showy.
- Using paint instead of varnish – There’s nothing worse than spending time and money stripping your floorboards back to the wood to find that they’re in poor condition or look ugly. Wood paint will allow you to play around with the dark/light idea while also covering up all the sins of the natural wood.
- Mixing it up – Don’t be afraid to try mixing it up and painting the stairs lighter than the risers! This works well if the staircase doesn’t get much natural light as it tends to lift the area.
- Painting or varnishing runners – Runners have come in and out of fashion over the years, but we still like to see the creative use of them on a set of stairs. Paint the outer edges the same colour as your skirting boards and either varnish the centre or paint them a visually interesting colour. Consider adding a narrow stripe on either side in the same colour as the centre section for added interest.
More runners
Don’t discount more traditional carpeted runners – they’re fantastic in high traffic areas and will protect your stairs if the wood is old and worn. You can be creative by using nailed down rugs or off-cuts of carpet instead of dedicated runners.
Best of both worlds
Another option that works well, especially if you have noisy stairs, is to paint or varnish the risers and carpet the stairs. The combinations are endless, but make sure that you deal with the risers first so that you don’t drip on your new carpet.
Going the extra mile
LED lights have opened up a whole new world of interior design possibilities, but we bet that you’ve never considered them for your stairs! Try attaching strips of LEDs underneath the overhang of each stair to light up the risers – this works particularly well if you paint or stencil the risers with interesting features, but can look really classy with a simple black and white stair theme too.
As you can see, it’s possible to make your stairway a real feature and talking point with some basic DIY skills, but if you’re not sure what would work in your house give us a call! We’re always happy to offer some advice and personalised decorating tips, or we can just pop round and give you a quote.