I really, *really* don’t like gappy stairs. Particularly spiral gappy stairs. And it’s not about heights, I’m happy as Larry at the top of a church tower or whatever, only not if I had to climb a gappy, worn down spiral staircase to get there! 😬
Replies
Risers help to gauge how far one's foot is on the step without looking I guess. Conscious or subconsciously. Gappy stairs in large open commercial buildings are the ones that really get me. If there is a wall adjacent it doesn't seem so bad
sep 1, 2025, 8:16 am • 1 0 • view
yeah, gappy stairs drive me crazy too..
sep 1, 2025, 7:16 am • 0 0 • view
It’s not rational, I know they’re perfectly safe, but I would walk across a cattle grid (an actual ankle-breaking contraption) with glee compared to climbing those stairs.
sep 1, 2025, 7:19 am • 14 0 • view
Those stairs are nightmarish
sep 1, 2025, 7:21 am • 2 0 • view
They really are the stuff of waking up in a cold sweat at 3am! (And my stairs have been fairly horrific the last few months, in various stages of reconstruction. Nothing like as bad as that though and someone clearly did *that* on purpose!)
sep 1, 2025, 7:24 am • 1 0 • view
The thing that's making my "nope!" out is the alternating light-dark, with the dark treads apparently open on the side opposite the banister.... my writer brain is trying to write a murder mystery involving these now. (Not to worry, it'll be sent to the trunk soon enough.)
sep 1, 2025, 8:27 am • 2 0 • view
Friends had gappy stairs when I was a kid. I went from loving them (and crawling through the gaps etc) to hating them at about the point I was getting too big to crawl through them and worried about getting stuck...
sep 1, 2025, 8:16 am • 1 0 • view
its not even a clumsiness thing, it's the idea of having to concentrate *so much* to use what should be a simple tool
sep 1, 2025, 7:47 am • 2 0 • view
See, I don't think they are perfectly safe. Trip hazard for foot(s) slipping too far forward.
sep 1, 2025, 7:25 am • 4 0 • view
True. I have fallen up stairs for less (am a clumsy oaf.)
sep 1, 2025, 7:27 am • 3 0 • view
"Don't bugger about with the stairs" should be beaten into architecture students on their first day and regularly thereafter. There are rules for a reason!
sep 1, 2025, 7:42 am • 5 0 • view
*screams in neurodivergence*
sep 1, 2025, 7:24 am • 2 0 • view
I'd literally have to crawl...
sep 1, 2025, 7:20 am • 2 0 • view
I don't like them either. I know it's because I'm so clumsy that my brain is all NOPE
sep 1, 2025, 7:23 am • 3 0 • view
I have tripped up open staircases multiple times in my life but they seem to have added some glass panels and stripes in just to mess with perception further and make that more likely
sep 1, 2025, 7:24 am • 3 0 • view
Also people can see up your skirt.
sep 1, 2025, 8:39 am • 1 0 • view
This too.
sep 1, 2025, 8:49 am • 0 0 • view
Also people sometimes drop things on stairs, like phones or grapes or a splash of coffee, and I don't fancy the breakage from falling such a distance, or the crawling underneath to clean up.
sep 1, 2025, 8:37 am • 0 0 • view
Back in the late 80s when they were still building and the tallest towers weren’t in place, I took a small school party up one of the spires. They’re the reverse of normal spiral stairs. You can look all the way down the central gap.
sep 1, 2025, 8:03 am • 1 0 • view
I just remember windows down to the floor on stairs there in early 00's. And the queue backed all the way to ground level on the stairs. A lady was having a panic attack on one the open bridges between spires as well. I was so happy to get down
sep 1, 2025, 8:19 am • 1 0 • view
Oh, the open bridges. Yes
sep 1, 2025, 8:28 am • 1 0 • view
*shudders*
sep 1, 2025, 8:04 am • 1 0 • view
Not good design… imagine in a dim light when only white stairs would stand out.
sep 1, 2025, 7:26 am • 1 0 • view