Stair frieze - ideas wanted for interior design

Hello everyone,

We are currently working on the interior finishing - and are not quite making progress with the planning of how to design the concrete staircase. The problem is the [Fries].

During the shell construction phase, a upstand was created on the concrete floor in the ground floor and upper floor around the ceiling opening. This was recommended to us and is now (unfortunately) like that. This upstand is about 10 cm wide and 13 cm high. The finished floor is 16 cm high. Thus, there is an offset.

Attached is a picture of what it looks like now on the ground floor:

The ceiling will be plastered on the side. But now we still need a covering for this upstand. A [Fries] was recommended to us for this. Afterwards, we went over the options with the respective "professionals":

Fries is tiled like the rest of the floor but with an expansion joint:
According to the tiler, this does not look good visually because the tiles are broken up into small pieces and it does not look coherent due to the expansion joint.

Fries is clad with wood similar to the staircase steps:
According to various carpenters in our area, not recommended because the wood is too heavily stressed, e.g. by wet cleaning of the tiles, or if you step on it with shoes and it gets scratched. It is said that this will no longer look good after the first year.

Fries is plastered and painted white (or matching the floor):
According to our plasterer, also too sensitive to water and mechanical influences and would need frequent repainting.

Every craftsman thus pushes the issue away and each recommends the other.

How did you solve this in your house? Do you have ideas how we can cover the [Fries]?

Thank you very much for your answers

Best regards
Stefan

What kind of railing is going where? Made of what material?

Nice tiles by the way, AT extreme or Trust?

I would take the tiles. In my parents' house, the hallway as well as everything on the stairs (steps and frieze) is covered with marble tiles, looks great and unchanged for decades, easily withstands wet cleaning. And if you want to hide an edge joint, there are baseboards for that...

If you don't want to take the same tiles, you can choose a different color (contrast) and a smaller format (then you don't have to cut as much)

What kind of railing will go where? Made of what material?

Nice tiles, by the way, AT extreme or Trust?

The railing is to be made of stainless steel with horizontal bars and a handrail made of oak wood. For the gallery, glass will be placed in front of the bars so that climbing is not possible.
Thank you very much, we just really liked the appearance of the tiles and the price/performance was great – these are called Barge (beige) in 30x60. Do you have the AT extreme or Trust ones?

I would take the tiles. In my parents’ house, the hallway and everything on the stairs (steps and frieze) is covered with marble tiles, which have looked great for decades and can easily handle wet cleaning. And if you want to hide a border joint, there are baseboards for that...

If you don’t want to take the same tiles, you can choose a different color (contrast) and a smaller format (then you don’t have to cut that much)

The idea with the different format also sounds interesting, now, for simplicity’s sake, we’ve considered taking the same tiles that are already installed, just rotated 90 degrees. That way, they only need to be cut once in the middle and can be laid lengthwise.

Hmm... I think it will really come down to tiles. Now I just have to convince my wife. She still really likes wood as a frieze.

You can both have whatever you like: there are also tiles in wood look. A dark wood tone would create a nice contrast to your light floor. It looks like wood (if you don’t get too close) and can still be cleaned wet.

You can have both, whatever you like: there are also tiles with a wood look. A dark wood tone would create a nice contrast to your light floor. It looks like wood (if you don't get too close) and can still be cleaned when wet.

That would of course be a good compromise. Thanks for the tip! We have now asked our tiler to come by again. Then we will hold up the existing tiles and also the wood variant (which we still have left from the living room for testing). Let's see what can be convincing!

Now he also asked us how the finish to the ceiling recess should be done. So do the tiles simply end and then air, or with a finishing strip similar to, for example, a tiled windowsill.

I think a finishing strip looks cleaner or is that not done with a frieze?