Hello everyone,
we have an open stairwell in our semi-detached house that runs from the basement up to the attic. It worked fine for two people, but with a child it’s quite inconvenient noise-wise when one person wants to work or sleep in the attic while the partner watches TV or plays with the child downstairs.
Therefore, we want to have a partition wall with a door installed at the top of the stairs in the attic. To avoid making the stairwell too dark or cramped and to keep natural light, we are considering fitting the upper part of the partition wall, where the roof slopes, with glass.
I have attached a picture with a sketch showing roughly what it should look like.
We have a few questions based on our considerations and would appreciate your feedback and possibly your own experiences 🙂
For the frame, we are considering either metal (aluminum) rails or wood. The floor is glued parquet on a screed with underfloor heating.
Can the frame, whether aluminum or wood, be simply mounted on the parquet?
Are both aluminum and wood frames equally effective at sound absorption, or what should be taken into account to optimize this?
Is a high-quality door important in this context?
What do you think about having the door right at the top of the stairs? Do you have experience with this? Is it very dangerous to have the steps start directly after the door?
Of course, having a small landing before the door would be nicer, but unfortunately, it takes up a lot of space.
Best regards
Sonnengarten
we have an open stairwell in our semi-detached house that runs from the basement up to the attic. It worked fine for two people, but with a child it’s quite inconvenient noise-wise when one person wants to work or sleep in the attic while the partner watches TV or plays with the child downstairs.
Therefore, we want to have a partition wall with a door installed at the top of the stairs in the attic. To avoid making the stairwell too dark or cramped and to keep natural light, we are considering fitting the upper part of the partition wall, where the roof slopes, with glass.
I have attached a picture with a sketch showing roughly what it should look like.
We have a few questions based on our considerations and would appreciate your feedback and possibly your own experiences 🙂
For the frame, we are considering either metal (aluminum) rails or wood. The floor is glued parquet on a screed with underfloor heating.
Can the frame, whether aluminum or wood, be simply mounted on the parquet?
Are both aluminum and wood frames equally effective at sound absorption, or what should be taken into account to optimize this?
Is a high-quality door important in this context?
What do you think about having the door right at the top of the stairs? Do you have experience with this? Is it very dangerous to have the steps start directly after the door?
Of course, having a small landing before the door would be nicer, but unfortunately, it takes up a lot of space.
Best regards
Sonnengarten
S
Sonnengarten5 Dec 2025 20:09wiltshire schrieb:
We had a very similar situation in our terraced house from 2001 to 2019 and solved it like this:
Thanks for the sketch, that’s pretty much how I imagined it.
What I’m still wondering about is whether the side the door swings on matters at all—right as shown or left—are there any pros or cons?
How did you handle the top/ceiling area above the door with the small step?
On the shelf side, the wall continues straight up.
But the door is offset because of the small step, sticking out a bit into the room, and I’m struggling to picture a good visual solution for that.
Would the door frame basically be built up to the ceiling in the U-shaped design?
Or would the wall be built at the same depth, and a small ceiling section created over the area in front of the door starting at 2.40m (7 ft 10 in)?
But then from the inside, you'd have a small ledge above the door that would be visible…
W
wiltshire5 Dec 2025 20:50Sonnengarten schrieb:
I’m wondering if the side the door opens on matters at all – is it right as shown or left-handed – any pros or cons? We positioned the door to open to the left, as shown, so it doesn’t open in front of the shelf. Also, we had the bed above on the left side and a bathroom on the right side.
Sonnengarten schrieb:
How did you handle the ceiling above the door with that small step? We closed off the stairwell at a standard ceiling height above the door and used the space above as storage, like an attic. Otherwise, it would have been wasted space without any use.
Sonnengarten schrieb:
The wall on the shelf side is carried all the way up. Since we set up the storage area above like an attic, we didn’t extend the shelf all the way to the ceiling.
Sonnengarten schrieb:
But the door is set forward a bit into the room because of that small step, and I can’t quite imagine how that could be visually well resolved. Because the wall facing the stairwell was designed continuously from the room’s perspective, the step didn’t give the impression of a break.
S
Sonnengarten6 Dec 2025 08:42wiltshire schrieb:
We closed off the staircase at a standard ceiling height above the door and used the space above as storage, similar to an attic. Otherwise, it would have been wasted space without any use. Okay, that definitely changes the situation. We also considered installing a full ceiling, but that would have been more expensive and would eliminate the option of having glass panels to bring light into the upper stairwell.
I’ll need to think again about how to make it look good, especially with the door recessed inward and a shelf above it. 😉
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