bottom, as we only can see the treads not the risers (that small inset underneath a step).
I think it’s bottom too but I don’t agree with your reasoning, I’ve seen steps without that bit.
Edit: actually now I think top, I’ve been convinced by the daylight argument plus the realization that is a single mattress folded in half (I previously thought it’s two mattresses).
Edit: changed my mind again, made a top level comment
How does the single mattress in half bit make you think it’s at the top? If it were at the top, the force of the mattress trying to straighten itself out would push it down the stairs. Much more likely the mattress was pushed/ tossed/ fell down the stairs and got folded in that position, imo.
Edit: the shadows are also indicative of it being at the bottom: light source from above and and from the sides at the base of the stairs, either from an open door or window. Shadow cast from the door light source being cancelled by the light source from above the stairs.
Back when I thought it was two mattresses, I thought it couldn’t be at the top because the right mattress probably wouldn’t be held up like that. But since it’s one mattress, it can relatively easily be held at that angle with most of its weight resting on the step.
And that’s my main reason: it really seems like the mattress is being pushed towards that step, and I believe it’s being pushed by gravity. Doesn’t make as much sense for it to be pushed in that direction by someone.
I’m not married to it though, it’s a really tricky picture.
I’m not gonna lie, you’ve got me rethinking my position pointing out the right side of it. I do think though, that if it were at the top and resting on the one step, that the corner of the mattress resting on the step would be bowed in a bit more.
It is quite tricky.
Yeah. I’ve now found a reason that makes me convinced the mattress is at the bottom. I made a top level comment about it.
And you can see the wear on the treads. plus the handrail mount in the top left would be at a very inconvenient height if we were looking from the bottom up
The handrail argument doesn’t make any sense. It would be at the same height regardless of direction.
Also, the handrail mount is sideways if we’re looking down; if we’re looking up, it makes sense.
Maybe it is a light fixture.
It’s at the top, I have that same bannister mount, it points upwards to the banister.
The mattress is wedged at the top of the stairs thanks to its extreme springiness.
This is what gets me confused. If we’re at the top, I see the banister mount turning horizontal, not up. Up from that POV would be towards the viewer, but it’s angled away which would be horizontal. We have to be looking from the bottom for it to be turning up in this photo. I have no idea how hundreds of people look at that and say it’s turning up.E: nevermind, the question asked where the mattress is, not where I am looking from. 🤣
It’s the top of the stairs because in the top left of thr image you can see the banister support. If the mattresses were at the bottom then the angle of that support would be different
Why is no one else talking about this.
There’s no debate. It’s at the top of the stairs.
when the mattress is at the top, where is gravity and on what is it resting?
It could be wedged.
You think a folded in half mattress could get stuck in a stairwell? You might be on to something!
I think it might actually be held up by the other end of that banister.
agreed
That’s what I was thinking too
You live in fancy houses!
I mean, it’s code for anything built during the age of home electricity.
Well, my house has electricity and the stairs do not have that indentation at all. I could take a picture of the steps from the bottom or the top and aside from the wear marks on the treads, you can’t see a difference.
built during
When was your home built?
Well after the beginning of the age of home electrification, but I’m not sure precisely. I’m renting my current house.
I don’t think any of my stairs have had such an exaggerated ledge of the tread like the picture in this thread. In my previous house (owned, built in 2000 something) it just had a little bump nailed on to the edge, but it was symmetric on both the tread and riser.
3/4" min to 1-1/4" max is code, with a 9/16" nosing. No nose is doable, but with a min step depth of 11", generally youre not seeing that outside of commercial spaces (and typically concrete).
Not sure where you are (or if your stairs are even up to code), but that’s what they are referring to.
Never lived in a house, only apartments with no stairs (inside the apartments) and this is obvious even to me. You can know something without ever having owned or lived with that thing.
its simply code where I live and my old home where I grew up was already old AF and had those risers and treads (albeit not as deep as they should have been, I always tripped)
Some stairs don’t have different looking risers, but you’re still correct because you can see wear marks from steps on the carpet.
Trick question. It is actually stuck halfway along the entire staircase; the stairs go further on behind the mattress. 😤
From the wear patten on the carpet I would say bottom, but the handle to the side makes me think top !..
The handrail probably has the hangers perpendicular to the railing instead of plumb to the ground. Just the cheapest ones you can get.
Could be a sconce instead of a weirdly placed handle.
It’s a curtain rod to a window midway up the stairs. We’re looking down a flight of steep older stairs. The mattress is lit by the window that is (mostly) under the rod, and by an open door at the bottom of the stairs.
While I’m not 100% certain it’s not just confusing perspective, it does appear that the slope rise is shorter than the run, suggesting that this is from the top of the stairs.
Nice catch. The carpet wear corroborates this.
I think the railing gives it away.
Yeah, that too.
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Thought something was weird here. The contrast and colour is making it difficult. If you turn up shadows it changes the entire feeling, including where the obvious light source is. I wouldn’t expect the dark side of the mattress unless there was a bright light directly above it.
Also the banister/handrail arm wouldn’t be horizontal. Most importantly, congrats, you got me invested.
No, the light could still be above the mattress on the ceiling at the bottom of the stairwell. This proves nothing.
But, the wear on the carpet indicates to me that those are the treads, so this is taken from the top of the stairs looking down. Also, not mentioned elsewhere, there is usually a nose on the treads and the carpet would follow the nose, which can’t be seen from above.
Bottom. Wear marks from foot traffic + if that were the top. those mattresses would tip backwards unless someone was holding them in place.
The biggest factor IMO is something no one mentioned yet: we can only see one face of each step (either the top or the wall). If a photo is taken from the bottom, we would almost always be able to see the tops of the first few steps, which isn’t visible here. If a photo is taken from the top, the walls would pretty much never be visible (if they were, you could also see the photographer’s feet).
Therefore, this photo is only consistent with a photo taken from the top.
It is possible that this is an extremely long flight of stairs or that the photo was taken from a deliberately deceptive angle, but if that’s the case I have to say it was expertly done, because I am CERTAIN that we are looking from the top and the mattress is at the bottom.
Nah, the hanger for the banister is very common, it protudes from the wall and turns up into the bottom of the handrail, therfore we are looking from the bottom up.
It’s going at an angle, not up. It’s 90° from the handrail itself, which is sloped to match the incline of the stairs.
Exactly right. The steps sit on the risers. If you can’t see both it’s from the top.
Bottom. Carpet is really worn on the side facing us
I think it is the bottom of the top of the stairs because of the lighting to the bottom left of the mattress. That should be in shadow from the mattress if it was at the bottom of the stairs.
Not if the mattress is coming in from an outside door. That light could be daylight. In fact I believe this to be the case.
We are looking down on the mattress and it is casting a shadow on the step below it. If we were looking up at the mattress it would be casting a shadow across the stairs in front of it.
Yup, I agree
Curses!
Could be that there’s a door or window that’s contributing a lot of light down low, spilling under the mattress.
Definitely the bottom of the top. Or is it the top of the bottom?
At the top-left corner of the image we see a support bracket for the hand rail. The orientation of this bracket only seems to make sense if we are at the bottom of the stairs looking up at the mattress. The shadow cast by the mattress also looks like the light is above and slightly closer to the camera.
If we were at the top looking down, that would imply that the hand rail brackets were sideways instead of being vertical, and that the light was mounted on the wall instead of the ceiling. I have seen stranger things in construction but it would still be strange and unlikely.
So people walk on the face of the stairs now? 😁 Look at the wear of the carpet on the stairs.
Old carpet will show wear as people kick / drag against the backs of the steps. This is especially true for cheaper construction where the steps don’t have the typical overhang.
Bottom, you can see the carpet on the steps are worn out.
The carpet has wear on one side, and it doesn’t make sense for the wear to be on the front of each stair, so most likely we’re looking down from the top of the flight of stairs.
I know as someone who has rabbits and cats that the hairfall on the close to camera stairs indicates we are at the top looking down. I know hair patterns.
top. you can see part of the handrail on the top left of the picture
I think that’s a heavy duty banister bracket, like this one:
Some banister brackets have a swivel type arrangement so that the bracket can be vertical underneath the handrail, no matter the angle of the handrail. Basic heavy duty brackets like this one are completely fixed in orientation, so they’re installed with the vertical support at an angle to support the handrail. I suspect the bracket in the photo is at a 45ish degree angle and only looks vertical due to the perspective. The banister has been deliberately cropped out of the photo to make the perspective as confusing as possible.
Personally I think the photo was taken from the top of the stairs looking down, based on the wear in the carpet.
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Steps in a staircase have two measurements. Tread and rise. The proportions of what we can see make more sense as treads rather than rises. Therefore the mattress is at the bottom. Also what we can see of the handrail would make sense in either direction.
it’s about the wear patterns in the Berber.
that’s the bottom of the stairs because we’re looking at the treads.
