10 Striking Contemporary Lighting Designs
Modern lighting is not necessarily about abandoning tradition. Some of the most compelling pieces being made today take centuries-old materials, techniques and forms and push them somewhere genuinely unexpected – a mid-century silhouette revived in new proportions, a historic glasshouse reworking its own archive, a design language invented decades ago finding new relevance. What follows are ten pieces that carry that idea through, several bearing names any design historian would recognise.
1. A Modern Metal Filigree Stairwell Light
A Modern Metal Filigree Stairwell Light
Not every sculptural chandelier is made of glass. This suspended stairwell column, standing over three metres tall and crafted entirely by hand in Italy, works metal the way glass is usually worked – shaped and textured so that light plays across its surface, throwing intricate patterns of light and shadow onto the surrounding walls. Available in steel, light gold, gold, or bronze.
2. Angel Falls, by Nigel Coates for Terzani
Angel Falls, by Nigel Coates for Terzani
Most chandeliers describe a shape. Angel Falls describes a moment: thirty-six 24% lead crystal “angels,” each caught mid-fall in a base-jumping pose, suspended as if frozen an instant before landing – a singular piece of design from the English architect Nigel Coates for Terzani.
3. The 200cm Amber Ribbon Chandelier, by Metal Lux
The 200cm Amber Ribbon Chandelier, by Metal Lux
Some glass chandeliers are built up the way a building is built up – piece by piece. Six hundred hand-formed Venetian amber glass elements spiral over one another here to form a dense, glowing orb, part of Metal Lux’s Astro collection – astro being Italian for star, which is exactly what this looks like from below.
4. The Kelly 36-Light Cluster, by Andrea Tosetto for Lodes
The Kelly 36-Light Cluster, by Andrea Tosetto for Lodes
The most interesting thing about this piece may not be the light it gives off, but the shadow it throws. Laser-cut filigree metal spheres, suspended on fine wires, cast a shifting pattern that changes as the fixture is viewed from different angles – designed by Andrea Tosetto for Lodes.
5. I Lucci Argentati, by Dodo Arslan for Terzani
I Lucci Argentati, by Dodo Arslan for Terzani
A chandelier does not usually suggest movement. This one does: silvery metal “fish” in brushed nickel, lit from thin incisions along their underside, recall a school of fish moving through fresh water. The elements hang in a deliberately staggered arrangement rather than a uniform grid, so the “shoal” appears caught mid-motion, not static.
6. A Vistosi-Style Disc Chandelier, after Angelo Mangiarotti
A Vistosi-Style Disc Chandelier, after Angelo Mangiarotti
Modernism has a way of returning. A cascade of Murano glass discs, clear at the rim and nearly opaque at the centre, reinterprets the disc-chandelier form associated with Angelo Mangiarotti’s work for Vistosi. Original examples are scarce and rarely survive in good condition – this version can be commissioned in custom sizes and colours.
7. A Steel Grey Glass Chandelier, by Venini
A Steel Grey Glass Chandelier, by Venini
Murano glass is not always used to make something you can see through. Sculptural leaf-shaped diffusers in a cool steel grey glass behave here more like carved stone than blown crystal, from Venini, one of Murano’s most celebrated glasshouses, founded in 1921 but drawing on a glassmaking tradition that stretches back centuries.
8. A Murano Glass Palmette Chandelier, after Ercole Barovier
A Murano Glass Palmette Chandelier, after Ercole Barovier
Murano has its own vocabulary of form, refined over centuries, and the palmette – a single curved glass “leaf” – is one of its most recognisable words. Four tiers of them make up this piece, in a form after a twentieth-century design attributed to Ercole Barovier, chief designer of Barovier & Toso for nearly five decades.
9. A Ribbed Glass Chandelier, by Marchetti
A Ribbed Glass Chandelier, by Marchetti
This is a statement piece that skips colour altogether. Cylinders of ribbed Italian glass, held by metal bands available in seven distinct finishes from bronze to oxidised copper, do their work through surface and texture alone – the vertical ribbing catching and breaking the light along its length rather than through the glass itself, by Marchetti.
10. A Bespoke Crystal Chandelier, by Badari
A Bespoke Crystal Chandelier, by Badari
Crystal chandeliers tend to follow a fixed template. This one does not: a bespoke silver frame from Badari, sixteen lights strong, finished with faceted pendants in a choice of premium or Bohemian crystal – the kind of decision usually reserved for a commission rather than a catalogue chandelier.
The materials and ideas were already there: worked metal, hand-blown Murano glass, cut crystal, a modernist form first drawn decades ago. The transformation lies in what is done with them – how a familiar material or form can be reinterpreted, enlarged, and pushed beyond its expected role, from a single sculptural gesture to a chandelier that behaves more like architecture than ornament.
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