Both ideas are great. I never store my shoes in bedroom wardrobes. I have an inbuilt wardrobe in the laundry and two sections are for shoe storage. As soon as everyone comes home the shoes are taken off and left in the laundry so they can aerate and then they get put away in their clear plastic labelled boxes or the hanging shoe shelves (for everyday shoes eg sneakers, work shoes etc.)

Tsar specialises in custom carpet and therefore we do a lot of stair runners, both contemporary and classical designs. We are Melbourne based and will look after you. We tend not to show too many of our uber-classical designs online, as these are less popular, but we have done a lot of them. Contact Tsar at 03 9252 0488.

If there is a storage cupboard underneath the stairs, then I think its best to let go of the open risers. At the end of the day when it comes to stairs, I think you need to make simple decisions, don't complicate it. Sometimes spaces fuss over stairs and they can look great, but they are very impractical, expensive and dangerous. I think if you live in a house with no kids and no elderly, then you can lash out and go for something with more design risk. I think the timber stair profile shown in your picture looks great, and would work well with your vertical timber beam balustrade. However timber stairs can be noisy and quite slippery. If you are using carpet upstairs then you could consider running carpet all the way down the stairs. Don't do the half half thing. In order to finish the edge of the stairs neatly, I would edge the stairs with the plaster finish continuing from the cupboard wall, all the way up to the edge of the stairs and making an edge profile for the carpet to be neatly tucked into. By doing this you could still get the stepping silhouette which would look very cool. Then the beams could run off the plaster surface and not the edge of the carpet. Ultimately carpet may be annoying to have to vacuum, but it is a lot quieter, considerably cheaper and safer than timber stairs. Hope that helps. Good luck with it.

I too own a Qlder and found it difficult to choose exterior colours. But I do think you need to keep the handrails the same as the other handrails - blue. The balustrading needs to be the same as the other - beige. I think if you want to put the red somewhere, put that on the actual steps and decking on the door level.