Ideal stair angle

[Adamantium]

Quick question before I sign off on my stairs.

 

just wondering if there’s a golden angle out there, or at least a range for what is considered a comfortable stair gradient?

 

inagine space is not an issue, what angle should I be looking to achieve. The architect has already designed the stairs in, the builder woildnusually build them a fraction steeper. I’m erring toward shallower but worried about going too far.

[Ian]

@Adamantium

AD K of the building regs in England requires the following:

Tread width (going) should be between 220mm and 300mm

Step height (riser) should be between 150mm and 220mm

Max allowable pitch is 42 degrees

 

When measuring tread widths, overhangs don’t count:

Page 4 is the relevant bit you need:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/443181/BR_PDF_AD_K_2013.pdf

 

Edited October 23, 2018 by Ian

[Ferdinand]

 

This has been discussed extensively before. My view is that the stair angle is one of the best ways of making your house feel more luxurious than usual, and really helps more frail or elderly people. I reckon it gave my mum 5 extra years in the family house. I say make it about 33-35 degrees unless there is a really good reason to make it steeper.

 

This is one thread, with my comments copied below:

 

5 hours ago, Adamantium said:

Quick question before I sign off on my stairs.

 

just wondering if there’s a golden angle out there, or at least a range for what is considered a comfortable stair gradient?

 

inagine space is not an issue, what angle should I be looking to achieve. The architect has already designed the stairs in, the builder woildnusually build them a fraction steeper. I’m erring toward shallower but worried about going too far.

 

If I am correct, I think you are a doing a Prime Contractor build on a dreamy site outside London? It deserves a sumptuous staircase. ?

 

Ferdinand

 

-------------------------------------

 

A staircase with a shallow slope is one of the great hidden luxuries that makes a house feel sumptuous imo, even at the cost of an extra square metre of space (or two). It is like getting the orientation right - people who instinctively like the house may have trouble noticing why.

 

And it makes a significant difference to whether people can keep going upstairs easily when old; we reckoned our parents found it convenient for an extra 5 years+. And far better for the fat people we are all becoming.

 

I lived with the one below for several decades. It is a magnificent bruiser of a thing - Jacobean oak and pine with a gallery but sooooo comfortable. The shallow angle allowed my parents to keep going upstairs comfortably for a few extra years. Originally it had about 28 layers of paint from the Victorians onwards and we had two slaves architectural students who spent a whole summer restoring it.

 

There were 18 steps between floors, which were a little shallower than usual and I think the angle was under 35 degrees. Suggest go for roughly that.

 

And a generous half landing with a window seat, or space for a resting chair, is good :-). But that is more difficult in a modern setting.

 

My other favourite is generously shallow and wide open well circular staircases.

 

Suspect also that when falling down shallow staircases less damage is done as you go down less height for a given length of horizontal travel, as do half landings and curves (you stop quicker hitting the wall or floor less hard). That is just me guesstimating but feels about right.

 

Looking at Jack's numbers, I think I might try for something like 165-70 rising and his 270 going if the house could take it.

 

 

Edited October 23, 2018 by Ferdinand

[the_r_sole]

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Edited September 26, 2019 by the_r_sole

[jack]

2 hours ago, Adamantium said:

just wondering if there’s a golden angle out there, or at least a range for what is considered a comfortable stair gradient?

 

I spent a lot of time thinking and worrying about this (initially to the amusement, subsequently to the boredom, and eventually to the horror, of my wife and the architect). My excuse is that I once slipped on some very steep Victorian stairs with narrow treads while carrying a [edited to correct baby's age: just realised I told this story on the thread Ferdinand linked above] six three month old baby. Baby was fine, but I nearly broke my elbow protecting him.

 

One place to look is the commercial regs. They require wider treads and a shallower angle than residential. From memory, the statistics say that even small increases in run above the residential minimum can significantly reduce the risk of accidents. Also bear in mind that angle isn't everything -  fewer, higher steps with a longer run can give the same angle, but more space for your foot (but also a higher vertical per step, which may be more challenging as you get older). 

 

I used to carry a tape measure around with me when we were planning the house, and measured everything from the size of rooms I liked, to windows, to stair sizes. We eventually decided on a run that was similar to the stairs between the floors where I was working at the time, with a slightly higher rise due to constraints within the house design.

 

This is what we ended up with:

 

 

Note that the treads are open, so the effective size of each tread is more than 264mm, because your toes can go underneath the overhanging tread.

 

I find this size very comfortable. It's definitely a noticeable improvement over the basic building regs approach. I'd have preferred a lower rise. We could, for example, have added one more step and reduced the rise to ~172, but the extra step would have brought the stairs too close to the door for my liking (although now that we've lived here, I don't think it would actually have made much difference).

 

The only thing that concerns me about these stairs is that it's a long way down if you trip at the top. Given my time again, I'd have reconfigured the house to put the stairs with a 180 deg turn and mid-level landing.  

 

Oh, and the stairs are nearly the maximum width you can go without needing handrails on both sides. The max is 1000mm, and ours at 980mm feels very generous.

[ProDave]

The rise is easy. Take the floor to floor height and divide by the number of steps.  There is enough leeway in the min and max rise that you may be able for instance to choose say typically 13 or 14 stairs in a typical house.

 

Then look at much space you have. If you want to make the stairs easier make the going longer than the minimum. In our case we simply used all the space we had and enlarged to goinf and have stairs at about a 40 degree angle.

[Ferdinand]

OTOH take care not to build stairs for Lilliputions.

 

I spent last week helping someone move stuff around their house and my size 11 clown-shoes made me as if I would topple downstairs.

Edited August 27, 2019 by Ferdinand

[Moira Niedzwiecka]

I am just trying to sort our staircase out.

After many permutations I have put in an extra step, 14 instead of 13 with a going of 226, rise of 189 & 39.89 degrees it has a nice width of 950.

[Adamantium]

Thanks for the help as ever!

 

We settled on the architects original design.

 

16 steps to half landing 35.3 degrees followed by four more after 90 degree turn. 245 going 173.5 rise.

 

It’s a lot of ceiling height to reach and the floor thickness is another 500, maybe 550 now that the first gooor hollowcore is 200mm not 150 as per original design.

 

Plan was to start the stairs as far as possible from front door. Currently at 2.9m. Reducing the angle to 32.2 would have taken it down to 2.5 and the wife wasn’t happy.

 

I’m hoping 35 will still feel good. Single hand rail as discussed. 980mm wide tread, precast concrete as I can’t stand creaking.

Edited October 25, 2018 by Adamantium

[Dan F]

Just found this thread and it's very interesting as we are also looking at open-rung stairs, and currently reviewing the sizes.

 

We currently have 204mm rise, 290mm going  and 900mm width specified.  Reading this thread though, it seems the rise is higher than ideal, the going rather generous and the width quite mean.  At the same time, we don't have a huge amount of space to lengthen stairs much without compromising other spaces.

 

Given this thread I'm thinking we should definitly increase width to 950 (or 980), and rule out the current 205mm rise, but I'm not sure if we should try to get down to 178mm rise if it means compromising both the going and living areas. There are a few of the options I've been considering:

-  204mm rise,  290mm going 
-  190mm rise,  274mm going (means finding another 114mm for stair length)

-  178mm rise,  264mm going (means finding another 268mm for stair length)

 

Which would you have gone for @jack?

 

I've also realized that with open-rung stairs, if you want to keep a nice clean look without intermediate bars etc., you need to use chunky treads to meet the 100mm ball test if you have a large rise.  With a 204mm rise that mean equates to a minimum tread thickness of 110mm, whereas with a 178mm rise you only need a 80mm thick tread and a 190mm rise, would be 95mm thick treads.

 

Thanks!

Dan

 

Edited August 26, 2019 by Dan Feist

[jack]

17 hours ago, Dan Feist said:

Which would you have gone for @jack?

 

The latter two aren't that far from what we have, and I find that very comfortable. 

 

>200mm rise would give me pause, I suspect.

[Jeremy Harris]

20 minutes ago, jack said:

 

>200mm rise would give me pause, I suspect.

 

I agree.  We have stairs with a ~200mm rise and ~260mm going and, with hindsight, I wish we'd given up a little bit of hall space and made the stairs more generous.  They are just a bit steeper than I'd like, not really noticeable going up, but in a single flight going down I feel the need to grip the handrail.

[Dan F]

Thanks @jack @JSHarris.   I think we'll push for 950w,190r, 274g then. 

 

If we stuggle to make them fit, I assume even going down to 265/270 going would still be preferable over the 205mm rise though, right?

 

 

 

[ProDave]

We ended up with 205mm rise. I agree it is a bit more than ideal but we had to have an odd number of stairs so the bottom flight was shorter than the top flight, so settled on 6 and 7.   We compensated by making the going longer than it needed to be putting the pitch about 37 degrees.

[dpmiller]

We're drawn at 16@176r x 250g, 900wide with a 180deg turn halfway. Current temp stair is a single run slightly steeper and no hassle at all so I suspect the 176/250 will be pretty comfy.