Concrete Steps & Steppers

Steps are the one thing people notice with their feet

Every other surface on this site is judged by eye. Stairs are judged by whether they feel right to walk on, and that comes down to two numbers being consistent: the rise of each step and the depth of each tread. If one step in a flight is fifteen millimetres different from the rest, people trip on it. Not sometimes, reliably.

So the setting out is the job. Measure the total height, divide it into equal rises, and build the formwork to that rather than pouring to whatever the ground happens to do.

Floating stairs

A flight where each tread is cantilevered, so it reads as a series of separate slabs with shadow between them instead of one solid mass. They look light and they are anything but: the reinforcement and the support behind them is the whole engineering problem, and it is all hidden.

Worth knowing before you ask for them: they take considerably longer to form up than a conventional flight, and that is where the cost sits.

Steppers

Freestanding pads set into lawn or gravel. The spacing is the entire design. Too close and they feel fussy and people take two at a time; too far apart and they stop using them and walk on the grass beside them. We set them to a natural stride on site, walking it, not off a drawing.

Grip, because these get wet

Steps outside a door catch rain and hose water and they are the worst place in a garden to slip. A honed or polished finish on an exterior step is the wrong answer. Exposed aggregate, or a broom or non-slip finish on plain grey, gives texture where it matters. On a covered entry there is more latitude.

Three we have done

Architectural floating steps to a front entry in Morley, in architectural white, each tread cantilevered with the lighting run underneath it. Exposed aggregate steps up to a building entrance, carrying the same finish through from the path so the two read as one surface. And a second set of floating steps in Holcim Geostone architectural white, rising off a rendered retaining wall to a front door, with the rear of the same house done in the same mix so the two ends match.

Get a price

Ring Regan on 0433 510 118.