Rooms · Move · 12 min read · Updated September 2026

Hallways and stairs

The parts of a house nobody lives in, through which everything passes. The tradition reads corridors as rivers and stairs as falls, and asks that both be slowed, lit and turned. The corridor and its length, the doors that face each other, the stair that lands on the door, the rise and going a foot likes and the code’s limits, the counting of steps, the landing as an upstairs bright hall, and the light on the turn.

Oriented N 000°

Water

Fig. 01 A long hall under a skylight. The tradition wants a corridor lit along its length and interrupted before its end.

Halls, landings, corridors and stairs are the house’s circulation, and the tradition reads them the way the Form School reads water: as the channels along which qi moves. A straight, long, dark corridor is a river in flood; a stair that lands at the front door is a waterfall onto the threshold. The advice is the advice for water: slow it, light it, give it a bend. This page gives the advice for the corridor and the stair, the numbers a foot and a building code put on the stair, and the light both need.

The corridor

Plan 01 Hall and stairs: the stair turned from the door, the corridor lit and interrupted The front door opens at the bottom. The stair (solid) rises from the side and turns; the ghosted stair landing straight at the door is the one the tradition reads as qi running up and out. The corridor to the right is long and lit at its end; a rug and a pendant break its length, and the bedroom door at its end is set off the axis. Doors facing one another across a corridor are marked as the tradition’s “arguing doors.”

The corridor in the drawing is turned rather than straight, lit along its length, and interrupted before its end by a change of floor and a picture; the stair is turned from the door. The widths matter as much as the length. A corridor in a house is at least ninety centimetres wide in most codes, and a metre is the width at which two people pass without turning; a corridor narrower than that with things stored along it is the tradition’s blocked channel and the fire officer’s obstructed escape at once. What lives in a corridor is on its walls, at the heights the clutter guide gives, and nothing lives on its floor.

Facing doors

Doors that open directly opposite one another across a corridor are the tradition’s “arguing doors”: two rooms confronting each other, with the privacy of both lost when either is open. The remedy in a built house is habit, closing one of them, and in a planned one, offsetting them by at least the width of a door, so that neither room looks into the other. Where two bedroom doors face, the manuals suggest the same treatment on both, so that they read as a pair rather than a quarrel. A door that opens onto the side of another, so that one swing blocks the other, is the same fault at a right angle, and the remedy is a rehung door.

The stair

A staircase landing straight at the front door is disliked by every school: the tradition reads it as qi running up and out of the house the moment it enters, and the popular manuals add that money runs out with it. The classical concern is sightline and threshold, the stair taking the door’s whole view and leaving no bright hall; the practical concern is that the first thing a visitor meets is a flight of steps, and the first thing a person coming down meets is the street. The remedies are a turn in the stair, a rug at its foot, a screen or console between it and the door, and light on the landing; in a house still being planned, another place for the stair.

Fig. 02 Four stairs, drawn in plan with the front door at the bottom of each house. A: a straight flight that lands at the door, ghosted, the arrangement the manuals name against. B: a dog-leg that turns away from the door and makes a landing. C: a spiral at the centre of the house, ghosted, the one the compass schools keep out of the middle. D: an open flight along a wall with a window at its top, which takes the light down to the hall. The arrow on each stair points up. The tradition’s objection to A is the line it makes: a flight pouring toward the door is a river running out of the house, and whoever comes in meets it head-on. B and D are the forms the drawings on this site prefer.

The four stairs in the drawing are the ones the manuals compare. A straight flight that lands at the front door, A, is the one they name against: the stair pours toward the door and whoever comes in meets it head-on. A dog-leg, B, turns away from the door and makes a landing, which the tradition likes for the pause and the designer likes for the light. A spiral at the centre of the house, C, is the school teaching above. An open flight along a wall with a window at its top, D, is the one the drawings on this site prefer: it takes the light down to the hall and the eye up to the landing.

Rise, going and the count

The tradition says a stair should be climbed easily and does not say how; the codes do, and the numbers are the same in most countries within a centimetre. A step has a rise, its height, and a going, its depth from nosing to nosing. A rise of about seventeen centimetres with a going of about twenty-seven is the stair a foot climbs without looking; the English code allows a rise up to twenty-two and a going down to twenty-two in a house, and asks that twice the rise plus the going fall between fifty-five and seventy centimetres, which is the stride. It allows sixteen risers in one flight before a landing, and asks for a handrail at between ninety centimetres and a metre, on at least one side, continuous round the turn.

Fig. 03 Two flights, in section. A: a rise of seventeen centimetres and a going of twenty-seven, the proportions a foot climbs without thinking, twelve steps to a landing with a window on it, and a handrail at ninety centimetres; the pitch is a little over thirty degrees. B: a rise of twenty-two and a going of twenty-two, the steepest and shallowest the code allows, sixteen risers without a break, which is the most it allows in one flight; the pitch is forty-five degrees and the tradition’s waterfall is a fair description of what it feels like to come down it. The two flights climb about the same height. The numbers are the English code’s for a house, and most codes are close to them: rise between 150 and 220 millimetres, going at least 220, twice the rise plus the going between 550 and 700, no more than sixteen risers in a flight, a handrail between 900 and 1,000. The tradition’s dislike of the steep, dark, straight stair and its liking for the turn and the landing are the code’s rules without the numbers.

The two flights in the drawing climb the same height. The first, at a pitch of about thirty-two degrees, with a landing at the twelfth step and a window on it, is the stair the tradition draws when it draws a stair it likes: a pause, a light, a rail to the hand. The second, at forty-five degrees and sixteen steps without a break, is the code’s limit and the tradition’s waterfall, and it is the stair of most Victorian terraces and most loft conversions; it cannot be rebuilt, and it can be lit, railed and kept clear, which is most of what the manuals ask.

Landings

The landing is the upstairs ming tang, the place where the stair delivers a person and where the house’s private rooms begin, and the tradition asks of it what it asks of the entrance hall: room to stand, light to see by, and nothing stored on it. A landing at least as wide as the stair, and long enough to stand on with the doors closed, is the code’s requirement and the tradition’s. A window on the landing is the single most useful thing a staircase can have, because it lights the turn where feet are least sure; where there is none, a lamp at the turn does the same work at night, and a switch at the top and the bottom, so that nobody climbs in the dark, is the one piece of electrical advice the manuals should have given and did not. Nothing lives on the stairs themselves. The pile of things waiting to go up is, in the tradition’s reading, a blockage in the house’s main channel, and in anyone’s reading, a fall.

Reading the hall and the stair

The corridor’s length. Broken before its end by a rug, a picture, a light or a turn; no bedroom door as its target.
Its width. A metre if it can be, ninety centimetres at least, and nothing stored on its floor.
The doors. Not facing across it; offset by a door’s width where the plan allows, closed where it does not.
The stair and the door. Turned from the front door, or screened from it, with a rug at its foot.
The rise and the going. Seventeen and twenty-seven if it is being built; a rail and light if it is not.
The flight. No more than sixteen steps without a landing; a landing that is a place.
The turn. A window on it, or a lamp, and a switch at the top and the bottom.
The treads. Empty.