What to do with this bannister?

[Cerseilannisterinthesnow]

Not the best photo but the staircase is like this all the way up, sort of panneling. Wondering what to do with it? Paint it white and hang some pictures on it at the bottom of the stairs in the hall bit? Or paint it a different colour all together?

Are there balusters (is that the right word?) under the panelling?

What are they? Sorry to be a bit slow I’ve never had a staircase like this one

The railing/spindle things

I’m not too sure I don’t think so

We had something like that-albeit a smaller version. We took the panelling out and stripped the hand rails right back to be able to varnish them. And added glass instead of the panelling.
We do NOT have small children tho. Can imagine it wouldn't be fun if you have little ones running around.

I’d repaint it but in something less shiny.

We took off our panels and the spindles were underneath. It looks so
Much better. If you are at all handy I think I would try to remove them and put in spindles if there are none.

Like an eggshell gloss? Or a Matt paint in whatever I paint the hall in? I’m
Unsure if there is spindles but can have a look

Following as we have a similar style. 1930's and am not sure what to do with it. ( Ours is also painted white gloss)

Eggshell is the least shiny wood paint so I’d go with that, Matt paint would mark too easily.

Take the panelling off and uncover the spindles.

I’d check for spindles, if there aren’t any, they are very cheap £3 ish each and worth refitting.

There aren't necessarily spindles. Lots of 20s and 30s houses had this kind of panelling.

A lot of panelled bannisters look something like this under the fibreboard/plywood.

There was a 'thing' back in the post war days to cover anything which was hard to clean in order to prevent dust build up.

A lot of panelled doors were given this treatment and newel caps were sawn off and painted over.

You may have spindles under the panels, which may provide a little extra light.

@123rd my staircase is very similar but house is 1960s
I'd really like to replace with glass, was it difficult/expensive?

Not really. We went to Kent Blaxhill ( not sure if this is a nation wide firm) who quoted us...what I thought was relatively expensive were the brackets to hold the glass in place.
I think we paid about £300 for the glass but the brackets were from £15 each...

Ok so will check for spindles first of all, along the landing is also this panneling could I leave that and just do the actual staircase?

That’s the other side of the staircase if that helps

To add a bit of something to it, I'd strip the gloss off to expose the wood (if that's what it is) on the top, pain the panels a more mat, off white colour to try and give it a cottage look