Inspired Ideas for Brightening Stairwells

An interior stairwell, typically narrow with a vertical alignment, presents unique challenges and opportunities. Finding the right fixture can both brighten and beautify utilitarian passageways between floors—and avoids the appearance of a dim and dead design space. To that end, we’ve rounded up a selection of chandeliers and pendants perfectly suited to these areas, while creating striking statements in often overlooked spaces.

Wireflow Chandelier by Arik Levy represents a bold reimagining of the traditional chandelier. Distilled to its essential elements, this three-dimensional fixture unfolds in intricate tiers with slim electrical cables and pressed-glass LED light points. Tracing an airy architectural outline, it appears at once present and absent, making it ideal for stairways with distinctive design elements that Wireflow Chandelier won’t obscure.

Jp Morgan Chase regional HQ by HKS architects

Vibia’s Flamingo XXL pendant by Antoni Arola displays the elegant poise of the namesake bird that inspired it. Suspended from a slender cable, it projects a feeling of weightlessness as it hovers overhead like a bird in flight. The elongated form draws the eye upwards with a deconstructed design in which its LED light source is separated from the translucent discs. The shades can be customised into myriad configurations for a variety of stairwells.

Antoni Arola also designed the Palma chandelier, which connects light and vegetation as in a natural landscape. Two semi-circles of blown opal glass joined by an aluminum strap accommodate greenery along its axis. Available in a vertical configuration and hanging from a nearly invisible cable, it evokes the look of a luminous floating garden and conjures a relaxed, welcoming ambience in public walkways.

Architecture: Toro Arquitectos

Designed by Arik Levy, Vibia’s Rhythm Vertical features a series of slender light sticks of varying lengths fitted with LEDs. They can be arranged along the axis in endless bespoke configurations, from fluid and flowing to angular and anarchic. Dropping vertiginously from above in a dramatic cascade, the fixture fills a space and provides ambient up- or down-lighting.

Jordi Vilardell’s Slim pendant imparts a sleek sensibility to a stairway. Long, slender strands are suspended from fibre cords like drops of light falling from the sky, echoing the vertical architecture it inhabits. The LED fixture features ends tipped with frosted diffusers, lending a candlelit ambience; when grouped together in a set of up to 22 modules, it both connects and defines a soaring space.

Oficinas Deloitte Portugal by Openbook Architecture. Photo credits: Fernando Guerra