Looks like you have a landing 3 steps up, and a turn.

Ours goes up much higher before the landing, and off the landing is a glass door to a veranda. The previous owners had a huge mirror on the wall across from the landing, but it's sadly gone.

That huge wall is a great place to display art work, mirrors, etc. We purchased a massive chandelier to fill the middle space. instead of the ceiling fan that was there.

Good luck with your decisions! Not an easy job!
Suzi

This is called a switchback staircase or sometimes called a U-shaped staircase with landing. If you do a search on either of those terms, you should get quite a few examples, both on houzz and on a google image search.

The ones I've seen are usually more open than what you are describing "with a full wall on the left," but the basic shape is the same. The landing can be placed low like in your photo or high, but most often is placed with equal steps above and below the landing.

I've got quite a few examples of switchback stairs in my houzz ideabook below.

[Traditional Entry[(https://www.houzz.com/photos/traditional-entryway-ideas-phbr1-bp~t_741~s_2107) by Chevy Chase General Contractor Georgetown Development

[Traditional Staircase[(https://www.houzz.com/photos/traditional-staircase-ideas-phbr1-bp~t_745~s_2107) by Atlanta Design-build Pamela Foster & Associates, Inc.

Here is a link that might be useful: Stair examples on houzz

This post was edited by jenswrens on Mon, May 13, 13 at 17:46

jenswrens, I looked at your examples on houzz, and although I'm just a responder to this thread, we have also chosen to paint the wainscoating white, and the wall one unified color., but maybe we should paint the wainscoating the same...

I am a published artist with a ton of paintings in the garage, and no place to hang them. But that staircase wall is a treasure!
Suzi

Thank you both for your responses. I tried looking for pictures with the search terms given and even went through the houzz link jenswrens provided, but to no avail - nothing comes up with what we will have. The picture you posted jenswrens that is similar to the one I did helps a lot. I am a "visual" person and just would love to "see" what our staircase is exactly going to look like ahead of time. O'well. Thanks again!

Sometimes you just have to "wing it," and redo the results of winging, but sometimes the winging works!

No Fear!

Suz

Joy,

Perhaps if you provided us with a picture of your stairs as they are drawn in your plan, someone here can better select a representative photo of what they might look like in 3D.

Here is the image of the stair in Joy314's link:

[Traditional Staircase[(https://www.houzz.com/photos/traditional-staircase-ideas-phbr1-bp~t_745~s_2107) by Seattle Architect Motionspace Architecture + Design

To me, it looks very similar to the switchback stair that jenswrens discussed. Could you show us the stairs on the floorplan? Now I am very curious.

Here is a small portion of house that shows the staircase. Hope this explains what I am talking about.

The photo in the last post by Vanilla looks "just" like your plan. The only difference is that you landing is a few steps higher and you have a hallway created by the closet and study on the left. That is a pretty good visual and much better than most ever get when building!

mydreamhome, thank you for sharing your pics! Between yours and the ones already posted I am able to better imagine what it will look like. I do have the concern about moving furniture upstairs as well as if it will look like a dark hallway (hence we asked for a window on the landing). I am not sure if we can add the 4" at this point since it is a load bearing wall and will change the hallway upstairs and entrance to the basement. I am assuming it would require us to go back to the architect, which we would rather not do. Can you think of anything else other than it being difficult to move furniture? We do plan on having open railings so I hope that helps with making it feel more open and light. We are going to try to move things upstairs before the railings are put on, if that is possible.

Is this the only staircase? Furniture moving is the biggest concern I would have. Right now, DH doesn't want to move our rather new old sofa that is so comfy up ours because its so long and it will be a pain. Pointing out that we will eventually have to move a sofa up there has had no effect--he is procrastinating at this point.

As far as light, the open railings will help with that. Can you make the window wider without messing up the look of the exterior elevation? My parents have a traditional symmetrical switchback staircase as their back stairs with a window that's about 4'-5' wide if I had to guess off the top of my head. I want to say it's placed about 3'-3'6" from the landing floor and is maybe 6'-7' tall. A fixed/picture window would work in this configuration which will likely balance out the difference in cost from a narrower functioning window. Plus you'll get lots of light in the stairwell and spilling down the hallway there.

Hope this helps!

Yes, that will be our only staircase. I am just not a fan of homes that have one right when you walk in or that divide the home in half. (I know come resale we will have lost a large percentage of people who might buy, but we ok with that. We plan on living in this home for many, many years anyway.)
I am going to see if we can do a larger window. I think that will help a lot.
Thank you so much for your help, mydreamhome!

I think having a window in the staircase is a huge plus for resale. I personally love it. It's also at the top of my list for our "in process" plan design. So I don't think this will hurt you at all if and when you ever do need to sell. ;) I've seen alot of these "switchback" staircase irl and always loved them. So much safer for kids and elderly alike in case of a slip or fall. But maybe I'm just prone to anxiety like that. Anyway... I think you have a nice entry.

Thank you so much, redheadeddaughter! Your reassurance really means a lot and is much appreciated. Good luck in your plan design process. It's really a labor of love to get everything you need and want into one space and to also keep it all in a budget you are comfortable with. Sometimes wants and needs change through the process too, which happened to us and resulted in us having to go back to the architect twice after we made finalized our initial set of plans. In the end we had three different plans that we paid for. We joke with our architect that we paid for a couple of his vacations just from our changes. In the end it was worth it but we could have used the money on other things.