How deep should the stair landing be? How to design it?

Good morning!

We are in the middle of planning our single-family house and have a problem with our staircase.

The architect recommended a reversing staircase with a landing so that we have enough headroom from the 1st floor to the attic. For this, she planned a landing of 1.05 m. Each with 16 steps of 18/26 from the ground floor to the 1st floor and 17.4/26 from the 1st floor to the attic are planned (raw construction heights of ground floor / 1st floor are different).

Of course, the staircase needs quite a bit of space, which we are "missing" in the hallway – the lowest stair step currently ends flush with the wall. The hallway width would thus currently be 1.38 m, but for aesthetic reasons we would prefer around 1.5 m (the hallway will be about 7 m long – and no, that cannot be avoided :-( )

Now the question to everyone with a landing staircase: how deep is your landing? Does it need to be 1.05 m or are 95 cm sufficient?

Or did you let the lowest step project into the hallway and set the adjoining walls back a bit? How did you solve that visually – does it still look nice?

Another alternative would be to shorten the landing only slightly and instead narrow the tread to 25. However, that doesn’t sound ideal to me either...

I would be happy about suggestions and also pictures!

Does no one have any idea about this?

Is there anyone in this forum who has a staircase with a 25 cm tread depth?

I can refer you to this thread, where kbt09 has written quite a bit about stairs. Maybe that will help you:


Unfortunately, I can't say anything about the rest of the topic, we don't have a landing staircase. But I understand you, I would also try not to make the hallway too narrow if it is that long. And what about a straight staircase? Or just a half-turn one?

Could you please post the staircase, or the floor plan? Then people can definitely help more and possibly see more potential for optimization?

For understanding, here is the ground floor. Please focus on the staircase.

We are aware of the room dimensions and number/function and are satisfied with the rest of the property!

I would almost prefer a half-turned staircase (U) (I grew up with it and find it better out of habit than landing stairs) – but then access to the attic is no longer possible due to the insufficient distance between steps and roof slope.

The attic is ultimately our problem, as it should be accessible via more than one pull-out staircase in the future.

And yes, we are aware that the house with a total of 4 floors is quite large; we have discussed this issue thoroughly.

The plan is oriented north; the street is to the south and we do not want to have to walk around the house every time -> a front door in the north is therefore ruled out, which takes away many options for room arrangement.

The ridge direction corresponds to the specification in the development plan, which incidentally provides for a length ratio of 2:3 for the short to long side of the house (we can deviate from this since all others have already done so, but it should not be too square).

A straight staircase is out of the question for us because of the opposing basement stairs, and an L-shaped staircase is ruled out in my opinion given our room concept combined with the development plan requirements... the smallest "intervention" would therefore be to adapt the staircase itself with only 25 cm tread and a landing of 90 cm. or to let the steps extend into the hallway...

so I like platform stairs because they are easy to walk on (no tapering steps) I unfortunately can't tell you much more about the platform except that you have to consider whether you can still easily get bulky furniture around the corner with a shallower platform. there are stair studios, maybe you have just asked there or with us there are studios where you can try out all kinds of stairs. I also like the floor plan as it is (we are planning something similar but without a basement and instead of a pantry a technical room)

Hello Maria

I have the last stair step protruding into the hallway. But the hallway is over 200cm wide. So it doesn't help you much.
Can't you make the kitchen a little less deep (20cm), and not have the niche (at the entrance on the left) as a niche but continuous? That would definitely enlarge the hallway. The kitchen and the study room will just be smaller. But the hallway won't be such a narrow tube anymore.

Steven