Just as there are traditional and modern kitchens and traditional and modern bathrooms and bedrooms so too are there both traditional and modern stairs. The style you choose for the stairway in your home will be dependent on the overall aesthetic at play. A traditional staircase, for instance, will look strangely out of place in a modernist home while a beautifully minimalist, modern staircase will look just as out of place in a century-old Victorian. As such, when choosing modern stairs for a Toronto home it’s imperative you match them to the setting.
Evocative Modern Stairs Toronto from Stair Star
Both modern and traditional stairs serve the same function: to allow safe passage between the different levels of the home. That, however, is where the similarities end because once you get into things like design and materials the conversation goes off in 2 distinctly different directions as we’ll see.
Traditional Stairs
Traditional stairs are characterized by their typically wooden construction and their straight, L-shaped or U-shaped design. Various components including balusters, railings, newel posts and newel caps display varying degrees of ornamentation and detail and in older homes may even be hand-carved. Most components of the traditional stairway including the risers, newel posts and balusters are often painted while the treads themselves may sport a natural finish. Many traditional stairways also include storage areas beneath them which, in some cases, can be quite extensive. The traditional stairway is designed to meld with the surrounding interior aesthetic and create a relaxed, inviting feeling which is reassuring in its solidity and embrace of natural materials.
Modern Stairs
By contrast the modern staircase does away with most ornamentation and instead focuses on the purity of simple lines and shapes while highlighting the functional and expressive capabilities of materials as diverse as stainless steel, glass, concrete, natural stone and even plastic. With the modern staircase the stairwell is often much less rigid and tunnel-like than traditional stairwells. As such the modern staircase often seems to float in its space and is freed from the standard U or L-shapes that characterize so many of its traditional predecessors. The challenge with the modern staircase is often finding a way to liberate it from its historical anchors while retaining adequate levels of safety. Also, while it is possible to retrofit an older home with a more modern staircase such a project requires designers and craftsmen with a broad knowledge of both types of design.
Why Stair Star?
When it comes to designing and building modern stairs in Toronto no company has more experience or more talented and dedicated craftsmen available to bring to the task than Stair Star. We eat, sleep and breathe stairways and are one of the few companies with the experience and expertise necessary to create both breathtakingly beautiful, compelling and safe modern stairways as well as traditional staircases for any age or style of older home. Give us a call on 416-746-4462 and speak to one of our highly-trained representatives about creating the right staircase for your new or soon to be remodelled home.