Cable & Custom Railings

Why cable railing exists

You build a deck on a hillside for the view, and then code puts a 42-inch guard across the front of it. Cable railing is the answer to that problem. Horizontal stainless runs that read as almost nothing from inside the house.

It isn't the cheapest railing. It's the one people with a view end up wanting.

The requirements it has to meet

A guard is required wherever the walking surface sits more than 30 inches above what's below it, measured within 36 inches horizontally of the edge. In California that guard is 42 inches. The national model code says 36 and California amends it upward, which catches out-of-state designers regularly.

A 4-inch sphere must not pass through the infill. On cable railing that drives the cable spacing, and it's why properly built cable railing is tensioned hard. Slack cable spreads under a push and fails the sphere test even if it passed at install.

The guard has to resist a 200-pound load applied in any direction at any point along the top, and the infill has to take 50 pounds over a square foot. Those are the numbers that make railing a structural assembly. On a cable system the end posts also carry the accumulated tension of every cable run, often well over a thousand pounds pulling them inward. That's why end posts on a cable railing are a different part from intermediate posts, and why the deck framing under them has to be detailed for it. The 2025 code added prescriptive framing requirements at open floor edges supporting a required guard, which put in writing what good builders were already doing.

What we make

Stainless cable with steel or hardwood posts. Custom steel railing, welded and finished. Glass panel systems where the view justifies it. Hardwood top caps.

Because it's fabricated in-house, we can deal with the things that make railing awkward. Stairs that change pitch, curved runs, a landing that meets a wall at an odd angle, a post layout that has to miss a beam. More on deck stairs.

Near the coast

Salt matters. Fasteners and connectors exposed to salt water or within 300 feet of a salt water shoreline have to be stainless, 304 or 316, under the residential code. In Santa Monica, Venice, Manhattan Beach, the Palos Verdes peninsula and along the Malibu coast we specify 316 as a matter of course. It costs more. It's also the difference between a railing that looks new in ten years and one that weeps rust stains down the fascia in three.

Fasteners and connectors also have to match each other throughout the assembly.

One detail that matters more than it sounds

On a deck over living space, we'd rather face-mount a railing to the fascia than surface-mount it through the waterproofing. Every base plate on a waterproofed deck is a penetration in the exact place the deck drains toward. Moving the connection to the face takes that failure mode off the table.

Call (818) 345-2866.