Hall, Stairs and Landing Panelling: One Scheme, Three Walls

Quick answer: Pick one dado height and hold it everywhere: measured up from the floor in the hall and on the landing, and measured plumb above the tread nosings on the flight. Where the level rail meets the raking one, at the foot of the stairs and again at the landing, the two mitre together into a continuous line. That line is the spine of the whole scheme; if it jumps at either knee, no amount of good panelling below it will recover the look.

The standard height is 800 to 900mm; the dado rail height guide covers choosing within that range. Whatever you choose, check it around the whole route before fixing anything: walk it with a pencil line or a laser and make sure it clears window boards, socket clusters, and radiator tops in every stretch, because the height that works around one corner has to work around all of them.

Treat the route as a sequence of flat walls plus one raking wall, and plan them in this order:

1. The staircase wall first. It is the most constrained stretch: the string depth, the pitch, and the knee positions are all fixed by the stairs. Set the dado height and panel proportions here, on the wall with the least freedom, and export them to the others. Design it in the planner's Half Wall Stairs template, which switches on staircase mode and draws the flight from one step's measurements, ready to adjust.
2. The hall walls second. Carry the dado height across and divide each wall into panels using the same gap and similar panel widths. Walls between doorways rarely divide into the same panel count as the stair wall, and they do not need to: matching the gap and the general proportions matters, matching the count does not.
3. The landing last. Usually the shortest stretch and the most interrupted (doors to every room). Short lengths of wall between doors can take a single panel each, or be left as bare painted wall below the rail where a panel would be absurdly narrow; a consistent rail with occasional unpanelled stretches beats squeezed panels.

The planner handles this as one project with a wall per stretch: each wall keeps its own dimensions and layout, and the cut list can combine all of them.

Continuity is won and lost at the junctions:

• Internal corners. The dado rail is scribed or mitred around the corner at its constant height; panelling on the two walls either side is set out independently, each with its own edge gap into the corner. Do not try to fold one panel around a corner.
• Doorways. The rail butts into the architrave (or stops short with a mitred return if the rail stands prouder than the architrave). Keep the treatment identical at every door on the route; mixed endings are surprisingly noticeable in a corridor full of doors.
• The two knees. Where level meets rake, the rails mitre at half the pitch, and the panelling breaks at a plumb line near the knee, with the panels each side set out against their own run. The stair panelling guide covers these joints in detail.
• The stairwell's open side. Where the flight has a balustrade rather than a wall, the scheme simply lives on the wall side only. Resist mirroring the raking band onto the small triangle of wall under an open string; it rarely reads as intended.

Most stairwells have one wall that runs the full height of both storeys. The half-height scheme handles it gracefully: the raked band climbs the flight, turns level at the landing, and the wall above stays bare paint all the way up, so nothing needs fixing at height beyond the rail itself. If you are tempted by full-height panelling on this wall, plan the access first: above the flight, the ceiling can be four or five metres from the nearest standing surface, which means a scaffold tower or a staircase platform for both the fitting and every future repaint.

A practical middle path for a tall, blank stairwell wall is to keep the panelling half-height but hang the upper wall properly: a picture ledge at landing-dado height, or a run of frames stepped parallel to the flight, carries the diagonal on up without any timber above reach.

Fit in this order: rails first along the whole route (they establish the line everything else is judged against), then panelling stretch by stretch, then caulk and fill everywhere, then paint the whole scheme in one pass. Painting per-stretch as you go leaves visible joins in sheen where old paint meets new at the corners; one continuous painting pass is what makes three walls read as one scheme.

The stairs are the highest-traffic route in the house, so use durable finishes low down: eggshell or satinwood on the panelling and rail, and keep a small labelled tin of the touch-up colour, because the first scuff arrives within the month. On costs, a hall, stairs and landing scheme is usually two to three walls' worth of material; the cost guide has a calculator that prices each wall from its actual layout.