13 Brilliant Staircase Ideas to Give Your Stairs a Step Up

Easy staircase ideas for decorating your stairs.

Add drama, color, and pattern to your home with these easy DIY staircase ideas.

Many people don’t think about the staircase when decorating their homes, but it’s actually a great place to add color and pattern. Whether you have a high traffic stairs or a lesser used staircase, there are plenty of DIY staircase ideas to give your steps some flair and personality. Instead of boring old steps, your stairs could be a dramatic high point of your decor with these easy staircase ideas.

Clever DIY Staircase Ideas

  1. Chalkboard Paint – Chalkboard paint is amazing stuff. Simply paint it on the front of your stair risers and let the kids decorate your stair fronts with colored chalk. Make it clear that this is the one place that it’s okay for the kids to color on the walls, though!
  2. Pattern Mixing Wallpaper – Wallpaper is another great DIY stair makeover tool. Don’t just use the same design on each riser though, but mix it up instead. Mix and match stripes and florals or stripes and dots for two powerful combinations.
  3. Piano Keys – Turn your staircase risers into a piano by painting them fronts white and adding black accents. Make sure to reference a real piano to get the pattern correct!
  4. Painted White – All white painted stairs, while a challenge to keep clean, are a thing of beauty. Maybe don’t do this if you have kids and pets.
  5. Stenciled Patterns – Among the DIY staircase ideas, one of the simplest ideas is to use a stencil to create a pattern on the stair fronts. You can find stencils at home improvement and craft stores.
  6. Letters and Sayings – Use stick on letters to add inspirational sayings, song lyrics, poetry, or other meaningful words to your stair risers.
  7. Colorful Freehand Stripes – Turn all that leftover paint into a colorful boho project by painting horizontal or vertical freehand stripes of varying widths on your stair risers.
  8. Rulers and Yardsticks – Repurpose rulers, yardsticks, and other fun stuff by gluing them to stair risers.
  9. Steps of Many Colors – Don’t settle for one color, but instead choose a different color for each riser. Many home improvement stores carry small containers of specialty and signature paints.
  10. Decorative Tiles – Add tiles to stair risers for pattern and color. Use the same tile pattern for the whole staircase, or use a different pattern for each riser.
  11. Mosaics – If you want to make a real project out of decorating the stairs, create an artistic mosaic using glass, tile, stones, ceramic pieces, and other bits and bobs. This way would obviously take quite some time to complete, but it would be totally unique!
  12. Wainscoting – Sometimes simple is best and adding wainscoting to stair risers is a great way to add some lovely texture.
  13. Black Paint and Gold Stencil – For some drama, consider painting your stair fronts with black paint and stenciling an intricate design or pattern in gold paint.

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Image: TributeDesigns

Jen Wallace

Jen Wallace shares her indie life by writing about making, creating, cooking, learning, playing, decorating, and pretty much anything else that strikes her fancy from indie biz tips to the modern history of the American hemline.