Deck Railing Ideas

[Zachary Caldwell]

My wife wants me to redo the deck this summer possibly. I am struggling to find good ideas for the railing. Anyone have any pictures of their railing? I can't decide what to do. Our house is fairly unique/modern looking, so something in the modern look is what we are thinking. If anyone has some pictures of what they have done, I would appreciate the spark.
Thanks,
Zach

[Mel Fulks]

I like CNC designs cut out of EXTERRA (exterior mdf). Pierced imbricated (fish scale ) designs are my favorite. The panels
can fit into grooves cut into posts ,also made of EXTERRA ,then trimmed with a moulding.

[Bill Dufour]

glass panels?

[John Goodin]

Stainless steel cable railing. I don’t have picture of mine, on vacation, but it is modern and virtually disappears leaving an open look. Great for enhancing the view. It can be pricey but you can make two 90 degree turns per cable which saves a lot.

[Rob Luter]

We used black conduit with our cedar deck. It meets code and you can see right through it.

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[Timothy Thorpe Allen]

Second on the Stainless Steel Cable:

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[Bill Carey]

We used hog wire - a very popular item here in the middle of IN.
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[John K Jordan]

My wife wants me to redo the deck this summer possibly. I am struggling to find good ideas for the railing. Anyone have any pictures of their railing? I can't decide what to do. Our house is fairly unique/modern looking, so something in the modern look is what we are thinking. If anyone has some pictures of what they have done, I would appreciate the spark.
Thanks,
Zach

How high is the deck. Around here no railing is needed if the drop is less than 30". I like wood railings but when I built my new deck a left a wide stretch with no railing so I'd have an unobstructed view of the trees and the horses in the pasture. I do have a safety chain I can stretch across when small children or uncoordinated people visit.

JKJ

[Bill Dufour]

We used hog wire - a very popular item here in the middle of IN.
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I would spend a little more and get the flat horse panel wire grids

[Bill Carey]

I would spend a little more and get the flat horse panel wire grids


the only horse panels TS had at the time were 2"x4", which was too busy looking, and 6"x6" which does not satisfy the 4" sphere code test. All were in the same ballpark $$ wise - was a matter of finding the panels with the largest openings that would pass inspection.

[Frank Pratt]

Here, and many other places, the stainless cable type railings, or any other systems with horizontal elements between the top & bottom rail, are no longer legal because they are 'climbable'

[Patrick Kane]

I very nearly did the SS cable for my deck, and i am very happy i did not. I am on a bit of an elevated position with a second story deck, and it is quite nice to be seated and not have pedestrian/vehicular traffic see you. The cable railing is a fantastic choice if your house is Falling Water, and you have a great view without neighbors. Otherwise, keep in mind it offers nill in terms of privacy.

I dont have a photo of my place, but we ended up doing mostly clear and straight grain cedar for the railing. It looks very similar to the attached fence. I think it looks and feel contemporary without being ultra modern like a glass pane railing or SS cable. By the sounds of it, your house is considerably more unique than mine and it might compliment it well.

[Peter Kelly]

https://i.imgur.com/23mO169.jpg

I finished this a few weeks ago, am planning on something similar for the exterior of my place Upstate when I re-do the deck.

[Mel Fulks]

Besides the scale pattern there are "Chinese Chippendale " and many other patterns not seen much, in the book of
Chinese lattices. Offering a few designs would be a good idea for anyone with a CNC. The prevailing wisdom around here
is "ain't nobody asking for em' " But many carpenters can be seen seen cutting all those little sticks for Chinese
Chippendale .

[Tom M King]

Not fitting for every style house, but works for some.

[Tom M King]

I'm planning to screen in this porch, but haven't decided on what to do with the lower part. I think I'm just going to double layer with a heavier black mesh down low, but undecided what to make the rail at 3' high out of. We don't want to make it any thicker than necessary, to avoid blocking any view. The 8x8 posts are 12' centers. This will be a vacation rental house. The point (that's the one with the Sunset in my avatar) will be rented for weddings, and such.
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[Mel Fulks]

Tom, I have NO doubt about your work lasting ! One feature of that type design is that when you walk by two...they "move". But they don't move as much now as when I was a kid....guess they are getting old.

[John K Jordan]

I'm planning to screen in this porch, but haven't decided on what to do with the lower part. I think I'm just going to double layer with a heavier black mesh down low, but undecided what to make the rail at 3' high out of. We don't want to make it any thicker than necessary, to avoid blocking any view. The 8x8 posts are 12' centers. This will be a vacation rental house. The point (that's the one with the Sunset in my avatar) will be rented for weddings, and such.


As part of our remodeling and new deck project we added both a sun room and a screened in porch. The type of screen depends on whether you have pets and the direction of the summer sun. The screen company has thicker screen and much stronger screen that is more resistant to damage and can reduce the heat from direct sunlight. I chose this although the visibility was a little lower, but I'm pleasantly surprised at how much the thicker black screen does NOT interfere with my view of the yard, the horses, the woods, and the hills in the background!

The screen is strong enough to support heavy people falling against it. We went with screen from floor to ceiling but we have deck just outside the porch - I don't know what code requires if there is a significant dropoff.

I'm really enjoying the sun room and the screened porch!

JKJ

[Tom M King]

Yes, I've already decided on the screen, which sounds like what you're talking about, and the little aluminum extrusion to hold it in place. I forget the brand name. That brick floor is a little over 30" off the ground on the front, but I'm not so much worried about meeting the minimum building code, but keeping idiots safe from themselves.

This will be a vacation rental house, probably with several families at the time, mostly for only one week at the time, so we don't know what sort of people will be there sometimes. I feel like the bottom 3' needs to be something more substantial. We are also going to allow pets. I have no doubt there will be people that won't take care of the place like they would their own.

I was thinking about having only one horizontal rail at 3', and maybe even making it from black Aluminum, so it wouldn't have to be as thick as wood, plus, the unsupported length (ideally) would be almost 11 feet.

I haven't really spent a lot of time thinking about it. There is a Lot of other work we're doing, that will best be done by this Spring. That point is bare dirt now as you see in the picture, from taking out a lot of trees, and stumps, that I will plant grass on too, so a lot to do.

[Bryan Hunt]

You might give Pintrest a try. My wife and I used it for bathroom remodel ideas and it really helped us.

[William Hodge]

My wife wants me to redo the deck this summer possibly. I am struggling to find good ideas for the railing. Anyone have any pictures of their railing? I can't decide what to do. Our house is fairly unique/modern looking, so something in the modern look is what we are thinking. If anyone has some pictures of what they have done, I would appreciate the spark.
Thanks,
Zach

I have made quite a few handrails for carpenters. A good one for a deck is one that does not invite using it for seating. Another criteria is to make it useful as a hand hold for someone that needs help standing up. It would be interesting to hear a lawyer and an architect discuss what makes a good handrail. I guess both of them get paid when something gets built that looks good, but doesn't work. In any case, anyone that designs a hand rail should have to hang from it for three minutes. (by their hands.)

[Larry Edgerton]

I have done quite a few glass rails as most of my work is on Lake Michigan. Expensive to be sure, but I never see them again, pun intended. I make the posts out of 2x2 aluminum slipped inside a 5/4 Versatex wrap with a 1/2 inch channel routed in it. Glass slips in the channel, caps cover the top of the post. Max span for 1/2" tempered is 11'6" and is quite sturdy, withstands all that Lake Michigan can dish out and never needs maintenance.

Glass is a double edged sword, cuts out a lot of the breeze on a hot day when you want it, but it cuts out the breeze on a cold day when you are looking to enjoy the fringes of the season. Works out good here overall in this climate, but your results may vary.

[Tom M King]

Thanks for the idea.

Glass would work, but I don't think we want to block that much breeze from the screened porch. It gets Hot down here in the Summer time, which will be the peak rental time here on the lake.

I ordered a roll of black coated welded wire, with 2x2 mesh, to see how it looks. We have regular black hardware cloth serving that purpose at our house, and you don't notice looking through it, but I thought it would be better to have something more substantial for a rental house.

[Larry Edgerton]

One thing I forgot to mention Tom is that the Versatex is not hard enough to hold up the glass with a 1/2'x1/2' bearing surface. So I run the channel all the way down the wrap and make little buttresses out of Versatex that give it a 2"x 1/2" bearing surface. I cut them to fit the decking and hold the glass up just under 4" off of the deck to meet code and provide maximum ventilation. They are glued into the channel, so it serves as a stop to the channel and holds up the glass. The glue never fails as it is actually stronger than the surrounding material. Looks nice like it belongs there.

I make the columns with a lock miter on the shaper and set it up so they only have to be clamped in one direction in a press I made for that purpose. One thing to keep in mind is that the squizeout inside the column will become hard and not allow the aluminum post to be slid into place, so it is imperative that you make up a cleaner out of wood and immediately clean up the inside as soon as it is clamped. To further stiffen the columns I drive a fairly tight fitting piece of straight pressure treat down the aluminum square stock. This helps stiffen and also keeps the aluminum from collapsing when you bolt on the newels. Where I bolt on the newels I bore a 1" hole in the versatex, bolt to the aluminum directly with a 1" washer, and then plug the holes with Versatex plugs. You can not buy plugs that size but I use a sharp 1" plug cutter on Versatex that has been in the freezer, which insures a tight fit. To cut it you need a DP that will get down to very slow speeds or it will melt. I cut at about 20rpm.

I was nervous on the first one I did as it was facing North in the Straits of Mackinaw and gets some ferocious winds, a lot of times in cold weather when the Versatex is at its weakest. With the 1/2" groove in 1 1/4" material that left me with 3/4' of material holding it all together but as there is no engineering study that deals with this I just went for it and followed my gut feeling that it would be OK. The customer was aware of my concerns and said to go ahead. It survived a terrible storm that first winter unscathed and so have done several since. Although the Glass can span more I have limited my spacing to 9' for a little extra cushion.

[Tom Bender]

Larry
Can you share a few pics?

[Tony Latham]

Locally these are called hog panels. 425900

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Sorry about the ugly back-lit view.

It fits our "modern" house that has a shed roof and sheathed in cor-ten (rusty) corrugated steel.

Tony

[mark kosse]

I know this is an old thread but I thought I'd show a pic of my rails made from cedar trees here at the farm. I had 4x4 treated posts I never liked so I wanted to have a post that would fill that hole. I built a jig that allowed me to route on an XYZ axis. I would take a post and turn the bottom into a 4x4 therefor allowing the post to both cover the hole and look like it was "growing from the synthetic deck.
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I was originally putting balusters in but that got to be too much of a hassle so I eliminated them.
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It was no small job. Locate, harvest, peal, mill, and fit. It was worth it though.