I think you’d agree that stripes should line up on a striped stair carpet. The stripes should be continuous from tread to riser to tread to riser. But with a winding staircase, geometry causes the stripes to run out of alignment – trigonometry, and all that. Disaster! Indeed, we’ve seen carpets laid that way, and they look terrible. So how on earth did we achieve this?
How to line up stripes on a winding stair carpet
We found a flooring company that has perfected a method for lining up the stripes on a winding stair carpet. It is a time-consuming task, so not cheap, but then the carpet itself was expensive, so you’d want it to look great.
The method is to cut along the stripes on the winder, bend the stripes so they line up all the way round, and then glue them in place. The carpet has underlay like any other, and you don’t notice the joins because the cuts are between the loops. Even on close inspection, the carpet on the winder looks just like that on the straight runs, and equally robust.
You can get away with some misalignment on narrow striped stair carpets because the deviation isn’t so marked. But with a statement, broad striped stair carpet, the mismatch is very obvious.
Other Striped stair carpets
Striped stair carpets really make an impact. It’s the first thing that catches the eye in a traditional British hallway. Here are some more examples:
There’s usually a colour in the stripe that tones well with a timber floor, so we often fit oak in the hall that works well with the carpet. You can see more examples in our hallway design page.
