Custom Stair Runner: From Start to Finish

A customer walked into our shop nearly two years ago to inquire about stair runners for the new home he was building in Texas. His plan was to create a grand entryway with a double staircase adorned by beautiful, handmade Oriental carpet stair runners. To do this, we knew we’d need to create custom runners to accommodate the customer’s specifications – we told him that it would take some time to have the runners made by hand in a weaving village of India — a minimum of 6 months — and asked if he could wait that long. The customer understood that high quality is worth patience and agreed to place the order with us.

Our client returned home to Texas and we worked out all of the final details through email and telephone correspondence, picking colors, narrowing down patterns, and getting the exact measurements. Once we were sure the runner would be perfect, we contacted our weaving center in India and the work began.

The master weavers knotted individual strands of 100% natural, fine, hand-spun wool that had been dyed a sumptuous shade of red with accenting colors of soft blue, grey, gold, and white, onto the sturdy cotton foundation; the pattern Mr. Smith chose is a classic Persian Herati design.

The hand-knotting took a solid year to complete, but it was gorgeous on and off the loom and we were confident that our customer was going to be thrilled with the workmanship. In total, we ended up with about 120 feet of handmade runner distributed into 6 rolls that shipped to us here in Maryland to be visually inspected and then shipped off to our client for approval. As we anticipated, our customer was very happy with the finished runners and was eager to have the pieces installed by our expert installer, Robert.

Robert’s unique skills as an installer of custom stair runners is hard to find due to the challenges posed by pattern-matching and staircase configurations, his eye for detail and his dedication to his work ensure an impeccably placed runner, every time.

So, with his tools in tow, Robert boarded a flight to The Lone Star state.

Upon his arrival, Robert got to work on custom cutting the runner pieces to fit the staircases.

After four 10-hour workdays, Robert’s runner installation was finished and our client was a very happy customer.

If you’re interested in custom stair runners and stair runner installation, please contact us today for a free consultation.

Until next time, best wishes!