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Stair Supplies

Stair Nosing

by Andrew Kozlov

Stair nosing is the nub of the tread which sticks out over the riser. When you're measuring the "going," otherwise known as the distance between risers, it's important to measure from nose to nose. Otherwise, you could get a skewed length for the going and possibly cut your boards incorrectly. Especially if you're building an open plan (with open strings), you want to make sure that your nosing doesn't stand out too much.

At the bottom of the stair is something called a bullnose, which is the final step before the newel post. In place of the bullnose, you can use either a double curtail or single curtail, but most carpentry experts recommend bullnoses because they'll give your staircase the appearance of being wider, since your newel post will be recessed by a single tread.

Calculating Your Stair Nosing Lengths

You should keep your stair nosing short, particularly if you have a large pitch angle--40° or more. Standard nosing yields approximately 20 mm of overhang, but you might want to do less than that if you're installing carpeting or if you're building an industrial staircase. Remember that long nosing on staircases can cause trip and fall accidents.

When measuring the thickness of your treads and risers, you need to take nose size into account. When calculating the total run of your flight of stairs, make sure that you divide by the total number of treads, and that you account for the nosing in your calculations. In other words, the sum total of the lengths of your treads should equal the length of the run of your steps plus the sum of the lengths of the noses.

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