Press S — or click the stairs icon in the toolbar — pick a shape, then click to place the staircase. Everything else is edited afterwards in the properties panel on the right: shape, flight width, length, number of steps and rotation. Stairs are free and need no account.
The four shapes
Select a staircase and the Shape dropdown offers:
| Shape | What it is |
|---|---|
| Straight | One flight, no turn. |
| L (turn left) | Two flights meeting at a quarter-turn landing, turning left as you climb. |
| L (turn right) | The same, turning right. |
| U (switchback) | Two parallel flights doubling back on each other. |
Changing the shape keeps the position and the step count, so it is worth trying all four against the space you have.
The measurements
| Field | Range | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Flight width | 600–3000 mm | The width of one flight, for every shape. |
| Length | up to 8000 mm | The footprint along the walking direction. |
| Steps | 3–40 | Walk slots — treads plus any landing. |
| Rotation | any | Steps by 15°, and there is a Rotate 90° button under it. |
Flight width being per-flight matters most on a U: the footprint across is two flight widths plus the Flight gap between them, so a 900 mm U with no gap is 1800 mm wide overall.
A U that turns on winders
A U staircase has a Turn dropdown with two options:
- Landing — a flat half-landing across both flights. It takes one walk slot and no rise. This is the default, and it is what every plan drawn before 25 August 2026 has.
- Winders (no landing) — three tapered treads fanning around the newel, so the stair rises continuously through the turn. The same storey height fits into a shorter footprint, at the cost of narrow tread ends.
The rays that cut the winders split the half-turn evenly, so the going stays constant along the line you actually walk. The two flights have to touch for the fan to reach the newel, which is why Flight gap disappears while winders are on. On a stair too short to spare three slots for the turn, fewer winders are used rather than starving a flight.
Mirrored flips a U about its walking axis — the fix when the turn goes the wrong way for the room it stands in.
Where the stair meets the storey above
The floor above takes a stairwell hole from the outline of the stairs on the floor below, so you do not cut one by hand. On that upper floor the stair is drawn as a dashed ghost, which is how you see what you are landing onto while you draw around it.
On a floor with a split level, a staircase stands on whichever slab is underneath it.
What this doesn’t do
- No spiral or curved stairs. The four shapes above are the whole set.
- The riser height is not set directly. It follows from the storey height and the number of steps — change Steps to change the rise per step.
- Winders are a U feature. An L turns on its quarter-landing; there is no winder option on the L shapes.
Next
Check the stair has room to be used: corridor and circulation widths covers the clear widths a stair and its landing need, and the plan check flags a stair it cannot reach.