Staircases and landings play a decorative as well as useful part in today’s spacious houses like duplex and triplex apartments, penthouses and bungalows.

Landing aesthetics

Landings and half-landings are often ignored when it comes to decorating a house, but treated with imagination, they can be both attractive and useful.

You can make a narrow landing look wider by papering or painting the wall along one side of it in a colour that contrasts with the other side. Don’t put a mirror at its far end as it makes the landing seem longer. Instead, put it on one side, or even on doors opposite each other, thus giving a feeling of increased width.

You can make a tiny landing look spacious by painting or papering the door panels to match the surrounding walls.

A large landing (a rarity nowadays) may be given a window seat in the form of a low, shallow chest or stool set below a window, with curtains arranged to hang open all the time to give a feeling of increased depth.

Some landings are big enough to use for light storage; you could have a small desk and drawers for filing.

If the landing is not draughty, it can quite easily become a sewing, mending or ironing corner. It should not, however, be devoted to homework or any task involving concentration, as people going up and down the stairs will cause distraction.

Smaller landings can become display corners; one large whatnot or a tall vase looks attractive at the head of the stairs. You can turn a half-landing into a library corner by fitting shelves or display a collection of special ornaments or china on them.

Space under stairs

If you have an open area under a flight of stairs, there are endless uses to which you can put it. In an open-plan room, it can become a pleasant sitting corner. Paint the wall and sloping ceiling under the stairs in a dark colour to give it a cosy, alcove-like appearance.

If it is suitably placed, it can become a tiny playroom where children can be supervised by their mother while she is working in the kitchen; a blackboard could be fixed on one wall. Plenty of room will be left to store toys and drawing or painting things under the lowest part of the slope.

The area is also ideal for a sewing or working corner as a desk or sewing table can be fitted neatly under the low part of the sloping ceiling, with a light fixed on the wall above.

If the space has already been closed off or made into a cupboard, it can provide vital storage for shoes, tools, paints or house cleaning equipment.

Colour scheme

The staircase is the backbone of such a house, and it should hold its whole colour scheme together. The hall gives the colour key to the downstairs rooms, and the first-floor landing to the upstairs rooms, so the staircase is the link that coordinates the decorations used throughout the house.

If you are standing in the hall and looking through open doors into all the downstairs rooms, the colours you can see should blend with what is used in the hall. The same applies to the landing or half-landing; you can use the colour scheme on the stairs to make a subtle colour transition from ground floor to first floor.

In this way, your home will gain a closely-related visual unity. It will have a central colour scheme, rather than being a series of separate rooms behind doors that have to be kept shut to avoid an ugly clash.

If you have very high ceilings, a large and noticeable handrail running up the staircase wall can break up the large expanse of wall and help improve the proportions. A different colour above and below the rail will increase this effect.

Light it up

Carefully chosen lighting can transform a dull, narrow staircase or landing into a spacious, attractive area. A central hanging light is the easy answer to the problem of lighting a staircase, though it is not the most original treatment.

The lighting should, for safety reasons, be bright enough to give a clear view of every stair, whether you are going up or down. Wall-mounted lights can be effective, but they should be fixed above shoulder height. Spotlights arranged to highlight each landing give a spacious effect to a small staircase and are best fixed at very low levels, almost near the skirting.

Remember that anyone walking upstairs towards a hanging light with a conventional shade will look straight into a bare bulb. Avoid this by using a globular shade, or one that hides the bulb with a fringe.

(The author is an interior design consultant, specialising in the design of corporate and residential interiors. As a senior faculty member at a Calcutta institute, she has delivered lectures, guided research and conducted projects in the field of Housing & Interior Design for over two decades. She can be contacted at kusumsmail@yahoo.com)