Planning your decking (futher advice)

Step Three - Decking steps

The first step when planning out decking steps is to measure the distance between ground level and the decking height. You will then need to make a decision about the number of steps required to lead up to the decking and whether a rail is required. The rise of each step (vertical distance) should be no more than seven and a half inches (seven inches is a common height) which will avoid making the steps too steep. The width of the tread of each step should be at least ten inches. If you decide to use a smaller sized tread width for your decking steps, you risk making your decking steps dangerous. You will also need to consider how wide you need the steps to be. A common size for the width of decking steps is 3 foot.

Many companies selling deck boards also sell decking step packs. Some of these packs contain everything you need to make your decking steps, whereas others just contain the stair stringers which are the side panels of the steps and give you the height and depth of each step, you then just need to put a wooden board on each flat part for each step as shown below.