Hi,

 

BS8300 does not require different nosings top and bottom, nor do any UK standards I am aware of. I would argue it actually cautions against it.

 

Stair landings are not required to contrast with the stairs in my understanding. When they do it can cause problems as identified by the following notes in BS8300:

“NOTE 1 Particular care is needed to ensure that there is adequate contrast between nosings and landings.”

                                                                    

“NOTE 5 It is beneficial that surface material at landings and floors contrasts with surface material of stairs, subject to maintaining visual contrast at top and bottom nosings.”

 

From these notes I believe a stair that’s all white with black nosings reaching a landings that’s black is a hazard as the last nosing would not be visible at all. It’s for this reason I tend to encourage the stair to be the same material as the landings. Trying the find three suitable materials with an LRV range of 90 (so each is 30 points away from  eh other) is rather hard from experience!

 

In the rail world people often miss interpret the PRM TSI requirement for the top and bottom step to contrast as meaning they must contrast differently to the others, which of course is not correct.

 

Regards

 

Martin

 

 

Martin McConaghy MSc MCIOB NRAC 

Director 

IDACS (UK) Ltd. 

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From: Accessibuilt list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Vin West
Sent: 23 July 2019 13:44
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Fwd: Stair Nosing Colours?

 

Hi Chris,

Listening to the experience of people with sight impairment I would say that the important issue is to make every stair nosing as visible as possible, both top and front, and if a second colour is introduced that necessarily introduces potential confusion - any possibility of introducing confusion when using stairs must be avoided.

 I don’t believe the fashion for different-coloured top and bottom nosing is supported by any guidance. What is in the guidance is a requirement that floors and landings can be distinguished from each other, which is perhaps where the confusion has arisen?

Vin


Vin West MBE
Chair
Arfon Access Group
01286880761
07771536760
Glyn Dwr
Llandwrog Uchaf
Caernarfon
LL54 7RA
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On 23 Jul 2019, at 13:03, Chris Cook <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

 

Hi All!

 

Please could I gauge the opinion of all on the list, who wish to reply to the following question below.

 

As I’m totally blind, it makes no difference to me whatsoever, but I’ve been asked to canvas some expert opinion and thought that here would be a good platform to do so.

 

Many Thanks in advance for any help.

 

Chris Cook.

 

The value of highlighting the stair nosing on stairs is obviously well known and to varying degrees of success this is a fairly standard improvement that should now be the norm on new external stairs and increasingly is being undertaken retrospectively on older stairs.

In most cases the stair nosings will end up all one colour ( although which colour can depend on the step itself), but on transport , particularly rail, they can end up with most of the steps having a white nosing whilst the top and bottom steps are just in yellow. This is supposedly so you can identify where either the top or bottom or intermediate landings are when looking at the steps. However , this subtlety is often lost on most people and in fact the different colour can cause confusion for people particularly where their sight is more limited and so having made their way down a flight of stairs looking at each stair nosing in turn they can get to the bottom one and think they have arrived at the bottom and then actually miss the last step.   

However what do you think, keep them all the same colour or have the top and bottom step in different colours, what do you think works best?

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