Interior Railing

These sets of railings were designed and built for a couple that wanted an interior railing similar to something they saw at a local climbing gym. They particularly liked the unfinished heavy steel with cable runners and a rounded over wooden handrail. However, the gym was too unrefined and much too industrial for a home. The round over on the wooden handrail seemed to be made by a belt sander and the turnbuckles were hardware store quality. The panels on the railing were spaced evenly. I didn’t see any playfulness in the design, but I did see potential.

I chose to design a railing with similar overall appearances, albeit more refined. The result was the cable railing with rounded oak handrail shown below. For the runners, I used high quality stainless turnbuckles and hardware specific to this application to both hide the cable ends as best as possible and keep the look as streamlined as possible. For the frame, I used heavy steel to simulate the gym’s railing appearance, including a bottom piece that is heavy angled steel such that it wraps around the floor and the walls, as you can see in the photo. For the handrail, I used white oak which was rounded over with professional tooling to eliminate variation. I designed a lip into the bottom of the oak handrail to hide the structural steel underneath the handrail.

The posts were threaded for the cable hardware, making the design more refined and more streamlined. The oak handrail was wrapped over the front of the railing for the same reason.

The overall design was successful in creating a fun, playful alternative to the industrial and unrefined look of the commercial space where the idea began.