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Stairs Calc

Flight

An uninterrupted run of steps between floors or landings.

A flight is a single uninterrupted run of steps — a continuous series of risers and treads with no landing breaking it. A staircase may be one straight flight, or several flights joined by landings. Code limits how tall a single flight may climb before a landing is required: the IRC caps the vertical rise of a flight at 12 ft (3658 mm). Example: a 16 ft floor-to-floor rise cannot be one flight, so it is split into two with a mid-landing. Breaking a tall climb into flights also gives a place to rest and shortens the fall distance. L-shaped and U-shaped stairs are simply multiple flights joined at a turn.

Try the calculator Stairs with Landing Calculator

Related terms

Landing A flat platform that breaks a flight or changes its direction. Number of risers How many equal steps the flight has; total rise divided by target riser, rounded. L-shaped stairs A staircase with a 90° turn, made with a quarter landing or winders. Total rise Vertical distance from the lower finished floor to the upper finished floor. Half-landing A full-width landing where a stair reverses 180° in a U-shaped flight.

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Stairs with Landing Calculator Break a tall staircase into two safe flights with a landing — Stairs Calc splits the rise, sizes each flight, and checks the maximum rise between landings.
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Written by the Stairs Calc editorial team. Methodology and code references: see our methodology.

Built and maintained by builders, drafters and engineers who plan stairs for a living — every code limit is transcribed from the published standard and cited to its exact section.

Last reviewed 2026-06-20 against IRC 2021/2024

Stairs Calc gives accurate geometry and checks it against published building-code limits, but results are estimates for planning. Codes are adopted and amended locally and change over time. Always confirm dimensions against your local adopted code and a licensed professional before you build.