101 “Death Stairs” You Would Never Want To Take

Quality design gets two fundamental things right. On the one hand, you’ve got to get the form of whatever you’re designing right. Essentially, this focuses on what the thing looks like.

On the other hand, you also have to worry about the thing’s function. If either or both of these aspects are missing, you end up with a disaster, whether aesthetically or functionally.

So, you’ve got to aim for a balanced approach. First, you want the thing that you’re designing to properly do the function that it’s actually meant to do.

For instance, if you’re working on a flight of stairs, then its purpose is to allow people to move upwards. In a safe, comfortable, and natural way. Without straining themselves, no less.

Once you’ve got the function all sorted out, then it’s time to think about the aesthetics of the thing you’re making or building.

To put it bluntly, people like looking at beautiful things. It’s therapeutic. Good aesthetics form an important part of a city’s atmosphere. Being surrounded by beauty can affect how you feel, too. It can encourage and motivate you, and make you feel proud to be a part of the local community.

In short, you want your building, product, poster, or whatever else you’re designing to look good. If it looks good, it appeals to more people. And that’s good for business, whatever line of work you’re in.

However, aside from following building codes and safety regulations, there are two things that you want to make sure of when you start honing in on the aesthetics of your staircase.

For one, you want to ensure that the form of your stairs doesn’t actually impede their function.

Sure, adding a bunch of gorgeous details in many different colors and materials everywhere might sound cool to you, but there are limits.

If those extra details make people more likely to trip and fall, if they can’t hold the banister properly, if they get woozy just looking at the flight of stairs… well, clearly, you’ve gone overboard.

In a similar vein, if the stairs are too low, too narrow, or too high for the average person to comfortably climb, you’re needlessly increasing the risk of accidents.

Naturally, not everyone’s going to be happy with the staircases you design because they might be far shorter or way taller than other people…

…And accidents can and do happen even when you’ve accounted for everything you could. But you still have a responsibility to do the best work that you can.

Secondly, you should not sacrifice your target audience’s comfort for the sake of your artistic vision. To be clear, we’re huge fans of aesthetic designs, art, and creativity. And some works are meant to be purely artistic, to be admired and not used.

However, designing private or public staircases means that you’ve got customers and their wants and needs to consider. You cannot and should not put their safety in last place.

You’ve also got to consider what materials you use. Try to think about the building’s purpose itself, as well as the future wear and tear the stairs are going to experience.

Some materials might be extra slippery, so you want to avoid those. Others might make people’s footsteps echo incredibly loudly, which would be annoying in, say, a hospital or office setting. And you don’t want to use materials that will get scuffed and break apart very quickly. You want resilience.

There needs to be proper communication between the people on the design side of things and the contractors who actually turn their drawings into reality. According to This is Carpentry, builders ought to review their architects’ blueprints very carefully. “Don’t assume that they know the code requirements in your area or have accurately measured the site conditions.”

Which of these staircases from hell would you be most scared to go up or down, dear Pandas? Though, putting safety concerns aside for a moment, which flights of stairs impressed you the most with its aesthetics?

Are there any horrendously designed stairs in your local area? We’d love to hear your thoughts! Share yours in the comments below.