Look up, the chandelier has entered its quiet luxury era

The first thing Huzefa Rangwala does when he enters a room is look up. “It’s just nicer to be in a space that has more volume,” explains the architect, who is one half of the architectural practice, MuseLAB. “Of course, intimate spaces have their own charm, but when you’re in a setting where you’re anticipating larger volumes, you tend to look up, and in some way, your mind is expecting to see something suspended within that volume.”

Traditionally, that “something” would be a chandelier—a glittery extravagance of glass and metal that outshines everything else in the space. “If you go back in history, the idea of a chandelier was always to create the impression of stars in the sky,” explains architect Ashiesh Shah. “These crystalline, celestial objects above you created an element of interest.” Over time, however, sensibilities started to shift. The gargantuan assemblages of crystal you might see at the Baroda Palace, for instance, began to make way for a quieter sort of luxury. Around the middle of the century, movements like Bauhaus and modernism popularised a function-first aesthetic, and opulence wasn’t cool anymore. “Today, the word chandelier has evolved as well,” continues Shah, whose eponymous atelier has designed a variety of lighting objects that blur the lines between suspended light fixtures and luminary installations. “But I always look at it as an opportunity to build floating sculptures.”

These days, chandeliers are rarely allowed to overwhelm a space with glitzy opulence—instead, they’ve taken on the role of modern art pieces, mounted within the context of a broader interior design story. Contemporary design sensibilities allow all elements of interior décor—whether it’s the furniture, the art, or even the structural details like a textured wall or a jaali—to be offered equal visual importance. So, when chandeliers do make it into a designer’s plan, they’re informed by a larger ecosystem of form, texture, and colours around. Take, for example, Mumbai’s health-food eatery Sequel, now shuttered, where Shah had matched the space’s textured curvilinear forms and muted tones with his striking beaded Channapatna light, made from handcrafted and naturally lacquered beads. Then there’s the cluster of rattan chandeliers by The Wicker Story that MuseLAB commissioned and suspended over the stairwell of a sprawling Coimbatore residence; an effortless complement to its Spanish Hacienda-style tones.

Occasionally, a designer might take the contrarian route, as Bengaluru’s FADD Studio did in The Courtyard Residence, where the earthy Chettinad-inspired materiality of the dining area was offset by a gleaming brass chandelier. It’s important to remember that chandeliers are valuable not only because of how they look, but also because of the quality of light they bring into a room. For instance, when Delhi-based interior designer Iram Sultan mounted a translucent ribbon shade light on the ceiling of a Mumbai dining room, her aim was to pour a warm, diffused glow onto the walnut wood table and woven veneer cabinetry. “A chandelier is certainly a piece of art, if used in that way,” Sultan explains, “But for me, it’s not only adding opulence to the space, it’s controlling the various lighting scenes I may have in mind,” adds Sultan, who is currently working on a project in which she plans to use a chandelier made of traditional Japanese washi paper, a material that adds a soft texture to the light.

And so it seems, chandeliers are shedding their traditional ‘grande dame’ crystals in favour of more innovative materials. Mumbai-based architect Rooshad Shroff has a series of marble bulbs that cluster together to create a vivid chandelier-like design story; product designer Harshita Jhamtani creates lighting objects from clay; studio Length Breadth Height has a series of sculptural chandeliers in leather paper; and Delhi-based lighting duo, Klove Studio, continue to work in blown glass and metal, but creating forms that defy all boundaries of its chosen material.

While it’s clear that chandeliers are playing it a lot cooler in terms of design, they’re as extra as they’ve always been when it comes to craftsmanship. “Chandeliers have always been craft-based,” insists Shah. Indeed, traditional chandeliers have always been a display of skill in metallurgy, glassblowing, and crystal sculpting, but today, designers are extending this typology to materials like ceramic, paper, rattan—even mycelium. “I think the next evolution is definitely going to be through technology,” Shah adds. “It could be kinetics or AI-generated projections...anything that a mind or machine can think of.”