I’ve always lived in multi-story houses, but I never really paid much attention to the staircases. One of them was particularly grand—but I never looked closely.
Now that we’ve moved, I regret not noticing something special: many staircases include a single upside-down baluster.
It’s not a carpenter’s mistake. If you’ve ever seen an upside-down baluster on a staircase, you might have thought it was a construction error.
But surprisingly, that’s rarely the case. Carpenters and builders often install one upside-down baluster intentionally. Bonus: a hidden signature.
In some cases, carpenters placed an upside-down baluster as a signature of their work—a personal mark, like a painter’s signature on a canvas. It was their way of leaving a trace in the home they built with their own hands.
