Tips for Designing Safe Staircases for Commercial Facilities
Staircases in commercial facilities help both workers and customers to navigate the building with relative ease. The staircase design is critical to preventing potential slips, trips, and falls in commercial premises, which prevents possible lawsuits. Therefore, it is essential to uphold staircase design standards when building a commercial facility. This article highlights vital staircase aspects that contribute to safer ascents and descents by workers and customers.
Staircase Visibility
The global 24-hour economy has seen commercial facilities adopt round the clock operations. Therefore, it is crucial to ensure that every staircase in a facility is illuminated adequately to prevent accidents during evening business activities. Unfortunately, most facility managers believe that ceiling lighting is enough to illuminate staircases sufficiently. However, nothing could be further from the truth, especially for staircases located further away from both natural and artificial sources of light. For this reason, it is can be helpful to design staircases equipped with LED light strips. The design provides adequate light to illuminate every stair step all the way. Another option is to provide visual contrast on the leading edges of treads − these work best for people with vision impairment. Visible staircases are excellent at preventing slips, trips, and falls.
Wide Spiral Staircases
While spiral staircases are not common in commercial facilities, the elegance they add to space has seen the staircase design implemented in smaller facilities such as malls. In some cases, spiral staircases are narrow, and this makes it difficult for customers to ascend or descend. In fact, most people tend to look down as they step on each step on a narrow staircase to prevent falls, not knowing that it only increases the chances of trips and falls. Wider spiral staircases are comfortable, which allows users to focus ahead instead of down. Moreover, a wider spiral stairway can accommodate more people.
Anti-Slip Plates
You are more likely to slip on a staircase while descending than while ascending. It is because most people travel down the stairs fast and only use the balls of their feet to land on each step. However, it is dangerous, especially for outdoor staircases that are exposed to moisture. Slips are also common on stairs that do not have wide steps since they encourage overstepping. Installing anti-slip plates on each step significantly reduces stairway slips and falls in commercial facilities. The best part is that staircase anti-slip plates perform well in both dry and wet conditions. Therefore, you do not have to worry about stairway falls, whether it is raining or not.
