Stairway to Heaven

My lovely followers,

Hope you are having a great week so far? I mean, as great as it can be in lockdown times. Today I reveal a new Before/After transformation of the old fashioned staircase in my last project.

When I first entered this house I directly recognised the darkness in the main entrance hall and staircase. The reddish and black old tiles plus the dark red carpet on the stairs swallowed every ray of light coming through the window. It also felt very busy with the checkerboard layout of the run down tiles against the dominant floral wallpaper on every wall. The only artificial light for that hall came from two small pendants.

As the brief was to create an airy , informal and intuitive space while keeping most of the old features , my first thought was to save the floor and just redo the walls and staircase. But soon I realised that this wouldn’t be enough to give this space the light and bright feel I was aiming for.

And so I came to the conclusion to remove all old floor tiles. This was really a tough decision , because normally I try to keep all historic features. But- covering with a carpet wasn’t an option, because a light carpet in an entrance hall would be awful . And also I wanted a smooth transition between the main hall and the back area, which had been attached later in 1960 and had been covered with ugly old fashioned laminate.

And, by the way , this really is something I would like to encourage you. Go with your gut feeling !!! Listen to your instinct and at the end walk your own way. There were a lot of people saying “ You can’t remove the old tiles”, “ You need to keep them” , “ It will delete the charm of the entire home “,… but my gut was saying to me, that I need to do this to brighten up everything. It’s a question of taste, of style, of courage and of sustainability, of course. But I had already compromise on the windows with keeping the old aluminium ones and not replacing them with brand new sash windows ( it would have costed a fortune and they are still in good order). I didn’t want to compromise again, just because unofficial rules are stating, that you can’t take out these old tiles. I could take them out- and I did !

With the new white tiles I followed a classical layout scheme to link the age of the house ( building year was 1936) with the new nordic flow. The result is stunning!

For the stair steps I decided to go with a classical sisal runner, lined with a black linen trim.

To let this space work well also during evening and night times I created a bespoke lighting concept with different and individual wicker pendants hanging randomly from the ceiling and off set in between the staircase void. These lights truly create a bit of magic in this home. They soften the white of the floor and walls and just add a bit of interest and off-beat factor.

I am very happy with this transformation . What do you say? What do you like most? Looking forward reading your thoughts in the comments below. Wishing you a productive and great rest of the week .

Maren xxx