Goldhawk Balustrade
“WEXLEY: FIXED TO THE SIDE, SO THE STAIRS STAYED WIDE”
Most balustrades take space away from a staircase. They stand on the treads, and the route you actually walk gets narrower. Goldhawk was designed to avoid that. We fixed it to the side of the stairs, which kept the passage wide and gave the client back up to 100 mm on every flight.
The design is our own and it was made for this house only. The interior has a lot of gold detail in it already, so the balustrade had to sit with the rest of the house rather than argue with it. We drew every element from scratch. None of it is a stock part, and none of it will appear on another project.
The metal is plated in 24-carat gold. The black uprights are sprayed in a two-pack paint that dries to a silk matt. The handrail is solid walnut and runs as one line from the ground floor to the top of the house.
A Balustrade That Gives Space Back
This balustrade does two jobs. The first one is easy to see: it decorates the staircase. The second one is less obvious. It makes the staircase wider to walk on. A balustrade is usually fixed on top of the treads. That takes width off the part of the stair you actually use. On Goldhawk we fixed it to the side of the staircase instead. Three things had to work together for that:
- The fixings go into the side of the flight, so nothing stands on the tread.
- Up to 100 mm of walking width is returned along the whole run.
- The uprights are kept narrow in section, so the balustrade takes up less room visually as well.
In a large hallway 100 mm would not matter much. In a private house you notice it every time two people meet on the stairs. This is why we decide how a balustrade will be fixed before we decide what it will look like.
BALUSTRADE:
24-Carat Gold, Applied Properly
The gold on this balustrade is not a lacquer or a tinted coating. Every gold element was electroplated in 24-carat gold, a process that bonds the finish to the metal itself rather than laying a film over the top of it. That matters on a staircase more than almost anywhere else in a house, because a balustrade is touched, brushed past and cleaned constantly, and a sprayed imitation announces itself within a year or two.
Against that gold sits the black, and the black is doing just as much work. The uprights are finished in a two-pack paint that cures to a deep, even silk-matt. Closer to the surface of raw silk than to a standard satin. It absorbs light instead of throwing it back, which keeps the reflections concentrated in the gold where they belong. Warm walnut above, silk-black frame, polished gold inside it: three finishes, each one making the other two look better than they would alone.
Walnut Handrail in One Continuous Line
The handrail is the part of a staircase people actually touch, so we treat it as the lead detail rather than the trim at the end. On Goldhawk it is solid natural walnut, chosen because the grain has a depth that carries the personality of the whole balustrade, and because walnut sits against gold without either one shouting.
As on every project we build, the rail runs as a single continuous line with corrected geometry through the turns and into the floor levels. That is one sentence to read and one of the harder things to achieve in a multi-flight house: every angle has to be resolved before the timber is worked, or the joints announce themselves and the run stops reading as one piece. The metal construction beneath it holds the geometry that makes the timber line possible.
Designed for One House Only
The interior of this house is built around gold detailing, and a balustrade of this scale either joins that conversation or ruins it. Decisions about the pattern, the proportion of gold to black, the section of the uprights and the line of the handrail were worked through against the rest of the interior rather than in isolation, which is why the finished staircase looks like it was always part of the plan.
That shows in the installation! The metalwork follows the movement of the flights, the gold picks up the light from the feature panel and the wall lights, and the whole structure belongs to the house instead of sitting on top of it. We pay this much attention to the details of every staircase we build, because the details are what people live with long after the project is handed over.
At V.PSTAIRS, we design and manufacture bespoke balustrades for private homes across the UK, from wrought iron and gold-plated metalwork to continuous timber handrails and fully custom patterns. You can explore more completed pieces in our balustrades portfolio, and if you are planning something of your own, the best place to start is a free consultation with our team.
