Designing small spaces -- Paint a stairway

Since we moved into our current home, I have always wanted to do something to the staircase. It's challenging to decorate -- the walls and ceiling are high making it difficult to paint, it's also fairly narrow making it too small to hang lots of pictures/prints. So what to do??

There's TONS of inspiration out there. Tile. Wallpaper. Mosaic. Paint. Numbers. Hooked Rugs?

My first thought was to tile the riser. Then, I moved on to wallpaper. We looked a several styles of wallpaper, but to quote Jeff, "we just never pulled the trigger on this mo-fo." Well, leave it to another late night to get motivated to do something.

The before.

The ACE design team on the project included Jeff, me, and our friend Joe. After many different design options, we decided to go with a sunburst effect using various colors from around the house. Joe pushed hard for a flower and sun sketch, but I thought a more basic design would be easier to execute. Here's the design board.



We lined the stairs with rope to be our guide lines for the burst. We started to paint away!! Not long into the process, we realized that perhaps our genius idea had been encouraged a bit by our libations. Our two-dimensional guide lines going over the three-dimensional stair case didn't translate so well. Crap.



At this point, it was time to go back to the drawing board, and my ACE design team is fading fast ... they are both two winks away from passing out on the couch. This project was quickly moving away from fun-times-decorating-late-at-night to I-F@#&ing-want-to-stab-my-eyes-out-with-this-paint-brush. So what's a girl to do? Well, that I night I decided to just go to bed.

The next morning, I woke up hoping to feel a bit more refreshed and encouraged. I took one quick look at the stairs and longed to leap back in time so I could smack myself before embarking on this catastrophe journey. The weekend was quickly fading and I needed to pump something out here ... and FAST! So I decided to take the easy way out, and just paint the riser one solid shade of blue ... a blue that I ADORE (it's the color of my bathroom).

The after.

Oooh, here's a nice shot that shows how the blue stairs transition into the blue bathroom. I really liked how that turned out. Another perk of the painted stairs is how lovely it looks when walking DOWN the stairs. We have a mirror that hangs over the staircase and it's like a little surprise to take in a burst a color on the way down.

I hope this inspires you to add a little touch of style somewhere in your house. It doesn't have to be as involved as this. Hang a new picture. Buy some fresh cut flowers. Add a colorful pillow to your living room. You might be surprised how much of an impact a little something extra can make in any room.

Happy creating everyone ...