Well all I know is I am still installingiron balusters here in Richmond Va in Aug 2018 and I did my first installation back in 2007. I just installed some plain square balusters for an interior designer who swore against them (she wanted a real thin baluster for this particular job so I suggested giving iron balusters a go) she now loves the look. Many of the model homes have the twist and basket series installed or go with the standard wood option because of material cost and labor. Also please note there are many different options and finishes to choose from. Also remember the pattern of balusters matters.

I have the same question. I saw a photo of a flat round shoe but haven't been able to find them. what did you end up doing?

I thought they would be much easier to install - but I really don't think Ill like the look. Im just going to take the time and effort and cut them, it will look much nicer!!

Okay, but houses designed by Hugh Jacobsen, Mies van der Rohe, and the likes of William Kesling, Richard Meier and so on--they don't represent the sort of house built by 95% of people, and these sorts of houses, despite their impact on architecture as a whole in some global sense, have really had almost no specific influence on what builders are building in middle class middle America, and it doesn't represent what most people want or think they what...or are even aware of for that matter. And nobody would really be worried about whether the handrail inside any of these houses is dated or is showing up on Pinterest or Instagram. Hugh Jacobsen's firm and Richard Meier have been designing the same style of house for 40 years and I don't think they or their clients are worried about the handrail in a house designed in 2023 is the same as the dated one in a house they designed in 1995. So showing some masterworks of a number of master architects, I am not sure what that is apropos of, because they are houses of strong, specific and enduring identity, and particularly in the last 40 years ago almost nothing built in the US has been. And that's why and how we end up with a situation like this, where the house could look like anything at all, and we are talking about picking out a staircase design based on the relative merits or demerits of how long the style has been around irrespective of what the house looks like at all. And that's why houses look like they do now, and that's why they aren't memorable, and that's why the particular fashions of 1997 or 2016 or whenever stick out, because everything was picked by itself from a checklist, and the whole was hardly considered then or now. Residential building design has turned into Mr. Potato Head. Unsnap this and snap on something else.