Access to the attic - space-saving staircase centrally located in the gallery

Hello everyone,

I have partially converted the attic for the children and am now facing the challenge of enabling them to safely go up and down without blocking the entire hallway. I hope you might have experience with how this can be best realized.
The attic is converted at a height of 2m and has this height only over a width of 45cm. After that, the roof slopes symmetrically at 45°. The access is located in the middle of the attic, currently via a folding ladder. The ladder measures 60 x 114cm, and I assume the opening is the same size. Basically, I would prefer not to change anything about the opening, as there is already relatively little space in the attic to pass by the hatch.
Now, there is the possibility of using a space-saving staircase or perhaps a spiral staircase. With the space-saving staircase, I would step lengthwise; with the spiral staircase, towards the roof slope. I can’t imagine whether this is really possible due to the ceiling height.
I am attaching 2 photos and a drawing so that you can better understand the situation on site.
In general, it should be a relatively inexpensive solution and, above all, one associated with little effort. Thanks for your ideas.

I would choose a central stringer/space-saving staircase with a spiral. That gives a steep staircase a bit more safety.

Why do you even want to change anything about it? The staircase meets the usual safety requirements and for children it’s a piece of cake to climb up there.
We had it like that too and the kids were often upstairs because of the built-up highway; sometimes we even closed the hatch when they wanted some peace.
Unless it’s a room that is used more or less continuously or will become part of the living area, I would leave it like that for occasional play afternoons, also because most of the time the staircase would be right in the way downstairs and the children might soon no longer play up there anyway.

Why do you want to change anything about it at all? The staircase meets the usual safety requirements and for children it’s no problem to go up there. We had it like that too and the kids were often up there because of the built-up highway; sometimes we even closed the hatch when they wanted their peace. Unless it’s a room that is more or less used constantly or will basically belong to the living area; for occasional play afternoons, I would leave it like that, also because most of the time the staircase would be right in the middle of the way downstairs and the kids probably won’t be playing up there soon anymore.

Thank you for your feedback. The problem is that the children can’t open the staircase by themselves. It has a relatively hard-to-access lock and then the length is not enough to unfold the staircase. I also looked just for fun for a scissor staircase with a drive, but that is really expensive... But basically I agree with you, no matter which staircase you take, if it is fixedly installed, it will stand right in the hallway. The hatch was also planned in a different position back then, but the problem was that you came out directly in front of a beam and therefore it was relocated...

Ok, for us it was like this: someone was there when they were upstairs. In that respect, we pulled the stairs down ourselves and later pushed them back up again. When they got older, they didn’t want to go up anymore. I would therefore really consider whether I use the room upstairs for more than just temporary playing by the children, and then I would maybe open up the attic a bit more and design the whole area upstairs to be nicely livable. Otherwise, I wouldn’t like the high costs, especially the presence of a rather cheap-looking staircase standing around in the living area. We had a somewhat different "staircase problem" here with access to a semi-open storage area in the gallery from the living area. Either it looked cheap, took up too much space, or was as expensive as a proper staircase then is – all that just to get a suitcase from upstairs about 4 times a year or so. In the end, it became a simple, but somewhat nicer oak wood ladder from a supplier in NL; for us it fits and almost looks like it was meant to be. I have probably seen all the stairs in the world on the internet and therefore know that it goes in circles. In that respect, I would go back to the start, strictly according to the motto: What is often used is often used, and what is rare (playing in the attic) is rare. Keep us updated; it is always interesting how/why one ultimately decides for or against something.

I also had someone here who would have expanded the staircase and led a staircase up the wall on the right. However, the opening would then have to be at least 2.3m long and 1.4m wide. But with a width of 1.4m, there would still be 1.5m of remaining height next to the passage in the attic. Who is supposed to go there, please? And all that for a price around 10k euros, at least then adapted to the existing staircase. Well, that's just too much for me and unfortunately not practical either, if I can't walk properly up there anymore. Basically, all the children can safely go up and down at the moment. Practice makes perfect. Still, one doesn’t really want to look at it.