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Stair Supplies

Stair Turnings

by Andrew Kozlov

Building a stair with turns requires even more carpentry acumen than does designing a straight out one-story staircase or even a spiral staircase. The challenge is that you now need to consider changing angles along two dimensions of your staircase. Not only must you worry about the overall pitch angle, but now you have to think about the changing angles of the treads.

When it comes to building a spiral staircase, creating turns can be easy enough. You simply calculate the number of rotations you want for your staircase, and then divide by the number of rises you're going to use. That should give you a pretty precise formula for the angles you'll need between each step. Of course, the final calculation will also depend on the lengths of the treads you employ.

Calculating Stair Turnings

For cornered stairs, the process gets a bit more complicated. The easiest corner stare to build is a simple 90° turn. All you need to do here is to build in approximately enough space to accommodate the width of the staircase. For a three degree winding staircase, you'll need to allow almost a full square meter of space to accommodate the turn.

For a staircase that winds at least four degrees, you should cordon often at least 1,000 square mm per turn, if not more. Again, the exact measurements here depend on the length of your treads, otherwise known as the "going." One way to conceptualize the winding staircase structure is to think of each landing as a separate staircase. That way, you can calculate your pitch more evenly.

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