Which railing suits your staircase

The railing is half of what people see and most of what they touch. It is also where a staircase budget quietly goes, so it is worth understanding the options before you fall in love with one.

Frameless and standoff glass

The choice when you want the stair to stay visually open. Structural glass held either in a slim base shoe channel or on polished standoffs, with no posts interrupting the run.

Glass is not one product. Regular clear has a faint green cast on the edge. Super clear Starfire has the iron removed so the edges read almost water clear — the choice when the glass itself should disappear. Euro grey and bronze add a tint that suits darker interiors, and there are over twenty further colours including back-painted, acid-etched and satin.

Specify tempered for a standard balustrade, laminated or tempered laminated anywhere there is a drop below. Thicknesses run 5, 10, 12 and 15 mm, and laminated build-ups to 21.5 mm. Ballistic grades are available for commercial and security work.

Hand-forged wrought iron

The opposite instinct: the railing as the feature rather than the thing you look through. Scrollwork, gilding, forged collars and pickets, drawn and bent by hand rather than cast.

It suits a traditional hall, a grand double-sweep stair, or a modern house that wants one piece of genuine craft in it. It is the most labour-intensive railing we make and it dates the least.

Powder-coated and timber-clad metal

A solid metal balustrade, finished in one of thirty-four powder coat colours or clad in a wood veneer to match the treads. It reads quieter than glass and warmer than bare steel, and it is usually the most economical of the three.

Laser cut steel panels

Instead of spindles or glass, a solid steel panel cut to a pattern. Because the cutting is done on our own machine, the pattern is not chosen from a range — send a photograph or a sketch and we cut that. It suits a stair that wants to be the feature without the weight of ironwork, and the same pattern can be carried into a gate or a screen elsewhere in the house.

Handrails

Steam-bent oak in a single length is the detail people remember, because a handrail with no joint in it feels different under the hand. Brass and bronze develop a patina where people actually hold them, which some clients love and others ask us to lacquer against.

Choosing between them

Keep the room open — frameless glass, Starfire if the budget allows.

Make the stair the feature — forged iron.

Warm and understated — timber-clad metal.

A pattern of your own — laser cut steel.

Commercial or a drop below — laminated or tempered laminated glass, every time.