A 19th-Century Staircase, Restored in Black

The balusters were the reason to keep it. Instead of straight spindles, the rail is filled with repeated loops, each framed by slender turned posts with small beads and collars. You can’t buy that from stock trim. It was made once, sometime in the late nineteenth century, partly by machine and partly by hand.

Repair, not replace

Age and use had worn the whole run. Rather than swap in new spindles, we repaired the originals one by one, so the rhythm of the balustrade stayed intact. The newel posts, with their carved leaves and urn-shaped finials, needed less work. Mostly they needed to be seen.

In brown, the carving blurred together. In black, every loop has an outline.

Why black

In its old reddish-brown finish, the staircase read as one dark mass. Farrow & Ball’s Railings, nearly black, turned it into a drawing: every loop, bead and shaft now has its own edge against the pale walls. It’s a contemporary finish on shapes that are anything but.

Three finishes, one stair

Not every part of a staircase does the same job, so we didn’t finish them alike. The treads got a hard-wearing epoxy for daily traffic, and the balusters got paint. The newel posts got a slightly glossier sheen, so light catches the carving where your hand lands at each turn.

Built once, kept on purpose

The walls around it stay quiet, with soft Roman Clay and simple trim, so the stair does the talking on every floor. The paint is new. The shapes beneath it aren’t, and our job was to make sure they last another century.