Under stair · sloping

Under-Stair Wine Display and Cellar Run

The triangular space under a stair, cut into stepped runs of bottle storage instead of being boarded up as a cupboard.

Reviewed by Stone Zeng, Export DirectorUpdated Factory Shunde, Foshan
SteppedBays under flight
18 mmFrame line
3Tiers lost
LEDFront wash

What the photographs show

A stair coming down over a run of racks, with the storage stepped to follow the underside of the flight rather than squared off. The treads are visible from the room, and the wine sits in the shadow of the stair with light washing the bottles from the front.

What the build had to solve

A stair soffit is never parallel to the floor, so the run is built as a series of stacked bays, each one shorter than the last, and the frame is cut to the stringer line. The stepped edge is drawn first; every bay after it follows the same diminishing pattern so the eye reads one object instead of six.

What to copy, and what to avoid

Worth copying: stepping the run in equal increments. Worth avoiding: squaring the soffit off with a box, which costs the volume that made the space worth using.

Mount
Stepped bays under the stair stringer
Edge
Cut to the soffit line, not squared off
Rows
Bottle cradles, pitch per shape
Frame
Dark stainless, 18 mm sightline
Lighting
Front wash, switched with the stair
Production
30 to 40 days, quoted per project

Frame 18 mm · glass panes up to 2,400 mm · scribe 40 mm · door reveal 3 mm · lead time 30 to 40 days, quoted per project · crated to a numbered setting-out drawing

Curved bottle wall following the sweep of a stair
The album

The same scene, frame by frame

Photographs from our project archive, grouped by room type rather than by client. No client and no address is named on these pages.

Curved bottle wall following the sweep of a stair
Bottle storage wall below a lit ceiling in a dark room
Questions on this scene

What clients ask about a room like this one

Can the space be closed in?

It can, and a glazed front under a stair looks well where the stair is open to a living room. Closed storage needs ventilation at the bottom of the run so the space does not hold damp.

What about the headroom?

Measure the stair at three points along the run and send all three. The bays are cut to the lowest number at each point, so nobody ends up with a shelf they cannot reach.

Custom stainless steel wine cabinet, lit interior
Next step

A room like this one, to your dimensions

Send three photographs of the wall and the bottle count. What comes back is a scheme, a drawing and a fixed price.