Q: Love your blog!! My house is a split foyer so my husband and I are constantly up and down our wood stairs from the moment we get home. We don’t have kids yet, but the young son of some of our friends recently took a header off one flight after he slipped. No major damage done but it really made me think about the safety (or lack thereof) of our stairs. The stairs are also especially loud!
I’ve been considering getting a stair runner installed. Given the degree of use, it needs to be super stain resistant and heavy duty, but also look nice. Any sugestions? Would you consider sisal or jute? Thanks so much!
A: Stair runners – so timely! For some reason, several of my clients have been thinking about this recently.
Let me come clean by first saying that I live in a 3-story townhouse in which we put a runner from floors 1 to 2, but not from floors 2 to 3. The reason? We’d had the second flight refinished before we moved in, and it was so beautiful – this 100-year old, yellow, honest pine – that I couldn’t bring myself to recover them. And guess what? Our twins have taken exactly one tumble down the stairs in the past 4 years, and it’s been on the carpeted ones. So although safety is certainly a consideration, children can learn to hold onto the railing and wear slippers with treads if you remind them enough.
That said, if you’re committed to installing a stair runner, there are practical considerations beyond safety.
1. Do you have pets? If so, avoid looped pile, which can hook claws, thereby damaging the rug and the poor animal.
2. Are they heavily trafficked? If so, we need to look to synthetic fibers rather than wool or cotton – or sisal or jute. Naturals are more eco-friendly, for sure, but they won’t hold up hearly as well.
3. Do you have a healthy budget? Because you can pretty much throw price per square foot out the window when you’re shopping; the real cost of runners is in the edge binding and the labor/installation. Do you have landings? Curvy turns? Those will add to the final cost.
Ultimately, you can’t go wrong with a low, tight pile in a solid color or a pattern. A client of mine just installed this lovely diamond patterned rug on her stairs (above and below). The subtle pattern is just enough to hold its own in the context of the Persian rugs nearby, and it’s synthetic, so it withstands the clients two cats and three children very well :)
For additional info, here’s a previous post about kids and rugs.