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Stairs in dreams: what it can mean

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The short answer

Stairs are about going up or down, step by step. Many dreamers connect them with effort, progress or setbacks, and endless stairs with a goal that keeps moving away.

Your dream is not everyone's

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Three ways to read it

Psychology and research

Research

On the continuity view, dreams borrow familiar settings to act out current concerns. Climbing can mirror effort toward a goal, and slipping or stairs that never end can mirror frustration. Near-falls on stairs also belong to the family of falling dreams that surveys list among the typical themes many people report. The direction you were going and how it felt are the useful details.

Classic texts

History

In Genesis, Jacob dreams of a ladder set on the earth reaching to heaven, with angels going up and down it, and wakes calling the place the house of God. Much later Freud, writing in a very different frame, listed stairs, steps and ladders among images he read as sexual symbols; later dream research has not supported his fixed symbol list, so we give it as a historical view.

Folk tradition

Tradition, not science

Tradition: American popular dream books, around 1900

Miller's 1901 dream dictionary read going up stairs as a sign of good fortune and falling down them as a sign of envy and trouble from others. It is reported here as how people once read the image, not as a forecast.

Questions to ask yourself

  1. Were you going up or down, and did you want to?
  2. What goal in your life feels like it takes one more step every time you look?
  3. Did anyone else share the stairs with you?

Related symbols

Sources

Every reading on this page comes from these works. Page references have not all been checked yet; those still waiting are marked.

  1. G. William Domhoff (2001). A New Neurocognitive Theory of Dreams. Dreaming 11(1): 13-33.

    cited, not reproduced

    • Cited at: pp. 13-33 (dreams as simulations of personal concerns) (reference not yet checked)

    Dreams as embodied simulations of personal concerns (the continuity view). The backbone of our psychology lens.

  2. Tore A. Nielsen, Antonio L. Zadra, Valérie Simard, Sébastien Saucier, Philippe Stenstrom, Carlyle Smith, Don Kuiken (2003). The typical dreams of Canadian university students. Dreaming 13(4): 211-235.

    cited, not reproduced

    • Cited at: typical dreams questionnaire, results (reference not yet checked)

    Survey of how many people report having had common dream themes (being chased, falling, teeth, flying, exams, nakedness and others) at least once.

  3. Hebrew Bible (1611). Genesis, in The Holy Bible (King James Version).

    public domain

    • Cited at: Genesis 28:10-19 (reference not yet checked)

    Quoted from the public-domain King James Version.

  4. Sigmund Freud (1913). The Interpretation of Dreams, translated by A. A. Brill. New York: Macmillan.

    first published 1900

    public domain

    • Cited at: Ch. VI, section E (representation by symbols) (reference not yet checked)

    First English translation, of the third German edition. Public domain; scholars consider it looser than the later Strachey translation, which is copyrighted.

  5. Gustavus Hindman Miller (1901). What's in a Dream (later reissued as Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted).

    public domain

    • Cited at: entry: Stairs (reference not yet checked)

    An American popular dream dictionary. Its entries are written as omens ("foretells"); we only report how people once read a symbol, never as a forecast.