Since the summer of 2017, 90 percent of Area Floor Works Owner Avo Sanasaryan's remodeling projects in San Francisco have featured floating staircases, and the trend isn't showing signs of fading. "That trend will continue going on for at least another year," he says. While he likes the look of floating stairs, Sanasaryan notes that it's also a practical design for the famously narrow houses that fill the City by the Bay. "When you have old, framed stairs, it's always dark underneath," he says. "But with the floating stairs, there's light getting to the first floor." Sanasaryan says floating stairs typically cost about 50 percent more to install than traditional stairs due to requiring twice the labor, but their elegance makes them worth the effort. "You can call it 'trendy,'" he says, "but it's also like a piece of art."