30 Examples Of Horribly-Designed Stairs (New Pics)

Ah, stairs. They might be your favorite feature of your home, if you grew up in a one-story house and made it your life-long mission to move into a taller home. Or they could be the bane of your existence if you live in an apartment on the 7th floor of an ancient elevator-less building. Whether you love them, hate them, or have never given them a second thought, we hope you find these examples of horribly built stairs entertaining. 

It probably is not common for stairs to be built in such a horrific fashion, leading to nowhere or having dangerously small places to step, but there is no question that they can be hazardous. In fact, stairs can be dangerous on their own, without even being ridiculous enough to end up on this list. According to a study from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, an average of 1,076,558 patients were treated for stair-related injuries each year in the United States between 1990 and 2012. The study also found that falling down the stairs seems to be a common issue for everyone, regardless of their age group.

If stairs are a part of your daily life, whether you need to use them to get into your home or to get around the city, I don’t want to make you paranoid about the dangers associated with them. Like anything else in life, they are perfectly safe the vast majority of times. But before you consider installing an abstract art piece of a staircase into your home, consider the risks. According to a 2017 study from The American Journal of Emergency Medicine, not only are there over a million stair-related injuries each year, there are also about 12,000 stair-related deaths annually. Don’t assume that it’s only elderly people with bad hips tumbling down the stairs either; though they may be at a higher risk, we’re all capable of slipping up (or down!).  

I vividly remember sprinting up my home’s wooden staircase in socks after getting home from middle school, and tumbling all the way down. I wish I could say that this only happened once… Thankfully, I never sustained any serious injuries, but my tailbone was certainly bruised. There are a variety of injuries that can come from falling down a staircase, as Amstep Products explains on their blog, but the most common are sprains and strains, fractures and head and neck injuries. In more rare cases, taking a tumble can leave people with spinal cord damage, deep lacerations, injury to the brain, injuries to the back or neck, broken bones, internal bleeding, and lower extremity injuries. It is noted that the severity of the injury does depend on various factors, including the type of staircase involved and how the individual fell. Falling forward makes it easier to catch yourself, but your arms and face are at a higher risk. On the contrary, falling backwards can lead to hitting your head with more force.   

Now, I’m not saying we all be paranoid and begin strapping on a helmet every time we walk up or down a staircase, but there are ways to make our stairwells safer. For example, if the stairs don’t have much traction, there are products like anti-slip tread that can be installed. Having a handrail is also never a bad idea. Don’t run up the stairs in socks like I did every day as a child, and don’t be distracted when going up or down. Seriously, you can check that text message after you get to the bottom. And watch your kids carefully if they are playing the game of “how many stairs can I jump up at one time”. Okay, maybe then it’s appropriate to enforce the helmet-on-the-stairs rule.   

I know what you must be thinking: when did stairs come about in the first place? Okay, maybe that’s not what you were thinking, but it would be interesting to know! Apparently, people have been constructing buildings with stairs for thousands of years, as Darcy Joinery Ltd. explains on their blog that stairs are one of the oldest structures on the planet. The original stairs were likely logs or flat rocks stacked on top of each other to accomplish the same purpose as modern stairs, but they quickly became much more advanced as civilization progressed. Ancient stairs have been found in excavated settlements, like the Mojenjo Daro in Pakistan, where they are assumed to have been built over 4,000 years ago. But apparently, stairs even existed in the Neolithic period, when the ancient Tower of Jericho was constructed, featuring a staircase of twenty-two steps.    

As civilization progressed and staircases became more advanced, the spiral staircase was born. Originally with a focus on practicality, the narrow spiral staircase became popular during medieval times to make climbing defensive towers and church steeples easier. As the staircases winded clock-wise, they put right-handed attackers at a disadvantage, as they would be forced to use their left hands if they drew their swords. These staircases also prevented soldiers from entering in masses, as only one person could be on each stair at a time. In fact, these staircases were sometimes intentionally built with uneven steps to trip enemies. I assumed the individuals who designed the stairs featured on this list had no idea what they were doing, but maybe they were geniuses. I never considered that their designs could be strategies to keep enemies out! 

Today, there are an extremely wide variety of stairs around the world, from elegant spiral staircases in the center of mansions to grimy fire exit stairwells in apartment buildings. If you’re a stair enthusiast looking to climb the longest staircase in the world, you can find it on Mount Niesen in the Swiss Alps. A two-mile long staircase with 11,674 steps, the Niesen Treppenlauf holds the world record by a mile. Literally. As a safety precaution, these stairs are typically only used for maintenance and closed off to the public, but once a year, 500 people are given the opportunity to attempt the treacherous climb. In fact, the fastest anyone has ever completed the journey, which is equivalent to walking to the top of the Empire State Building seven times, was in one hour and two minutes. I can only imagine how their quads were feeling after that hour.  

Another world-famous staircase is not known for its great height or beautiful scenery, but rather for the tragedies associated with it. The Staircase is a 2004 documentary featuring the harrowing story of how novelist Michael Peterson’s wife mysteriously died. He claimed she had fallen down the stairs in their home, but the autopsy proved there was more to the story. The medical examiner determined that Peterson’s wife had been beaten with a weapon, making the author a suspect and leading to the launch of a full investigation.

The investigation of Michael Peterson, which is detailed in The Staircase, found that prior to the death of his wife, one of his dear friends in Germany had died in a staircase in a suspiciously similar way. In the end, Peterson was charged with manslaughter and held responsible for the death of his wife, but it’s frightening to think that someone could almost get away with murder, possibly more than once, by simply blaming a staircase. If you are interested in hearing how the full story unfolded, The Staircase is available for streaming on Netflix.   

We hope you're enjoying this list of stairs that look like they were inspired by children's drawings. As useless as many of them are, at least they can provide us with a bit of entertainment. Be sure to upvote all of your favorite stupid staircases, and let us know in the comments if you have ever experienced a noteworthy stair design failure. And don't forget, proceed with caution on any staircase, but especially a poorly designed one!