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Lighting Living Room Design Dilemma

Staircase and natural light

3 years ago

Our place is a Victorian terrace in inner city Sydney. The ground floor living area gets practically no natural light. The ground floor stairs are currently hidden behind a wall from the living room.
That wall also hides a lovely big window to our internal light well.

I'm thinking of changing that wall into a half wall so that I still get the dividing effect, while letting natural light from the window in.

Are half walls old fashioned? any other options?

I've attached one photo from inside the living room showing in yellow the top part of the wall I want to remove. I've attached a second photo of the light behind the wall and the window.

Thank you

Comments (4)

oklouise
3 years ago
last modified: 3 years ago
sounds like a great idea why not remove some wall lining and see what's inside the wall and see how it feels..you may be able to make a framed opening in that section of wall and minimise structural changes but looks like you'll need an electrician to rearrange the light switches etc so be careful of wiring inside the wall
User
3 years ago
last modified: 3 years ago
It appears that the wall adds most of the strength to the stairs , so you'd want a builder that really knows what they are doing -- simply running a circular saw up the plumb line mark and removing everything above it may cause the steps to buckle or collapse -- steel beams would be unlikely back when it was built .

An engineer may suggest removing the stairs altogether , and doing a new steel based one -- that way , you MAY be able to have say glass sides , or stainless railings , or similar , which will let more light in , but more $$$ , and possibly moving the apartment in a different direction decor and 'feel' wise too .
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dreamer
3 years ago
I think that is a great idea. As oklouise said, just be aware of electrical stuff.
If the wall is load bearing or just to add interest, you could fill in with wooden slats, either a wooden colour or painted white.
Catherine T
3 years ago
last modified: 3 years ago
Thanks everyone, that's very helpful to talk it through. I don't think that wall is load bearing because we added it to the existing stairs. When we bought the place there was no wall there but we thought it would be good to conceal the stars and create a cosy lounge area - not realising the huge impact to light it would have (Silly us).

Love the slats idea. Or maybe having an open frame "window" look. Or just completely half open on top. I don't have a preference yet.

But would be open to other suggestions!

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