Often, spiral staircases are installed simply as a way to combat the issue of limited space, since they typically take up less room than a straight set. Thanks to their curvaceous shape, they are also more suited to a more centralised position without causing an awkward break in a free-flowing layout. With that said, the spiral staircase designs that we’re looking at here are either big in impact or huge in their elegant modern stature. We’ll be taking a look at narrow wheels that explode with colour, style and innovation, some larger spirals and helical staircases that cut extraordinarily beautiful and sculptural silhouettes into their surroundings, plus a selection of colossal feats of magnificent engineering.
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A cool cascade. This solid swirling white balustrade breaks into a cascade of concrete at its base, where heavy treads appear to float absolutely weightlessly.
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Turn up the heat to amp up the colour. Tempered steel shimmers an incredible shade of deep purple with rainbow flares, which makes this heat-treated balustrade into a startling focal piece within a subdued monochrome setting.
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If you’re hungry for even more colour, then step up your bright spiral staircase design with a graduated rainbow finish around the winders.
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Looking like it has burst from the swirling sky of Edvard Munch’s painting, The Scream, this artistic freeform staircase is striped with eye-catching cuts of colour.
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Rails of red. Bright red treads hang free of risers in this fabulously unique spiral staircase design, which is suspended above a contrasting green courtyard with its own stepped border. Colour coordinated furniture rallies a supporting palette nearby.
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Melted gold. This seductive staircase design drips a luxurious melt of gold through a light-filled stairwell, where sunrays accentuate its magnificently rich lustre.
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Like a pristine play on Picasso’s Girl with a Mandolin, this abstract modern staircase combines curves with the cubism of straight closed risers and boxed landing areas.
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Layers of luxury. An eye-catching feature wall or a bespoke floor to ceiling bookcase makes the ideal tall accompaniment to an elegant spiral staircase installation.
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Snail shell chic. The indents underneath this fabulous wheeling staircase installation create the aesthetic of an unravelling snail shell.
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Rising like a tendril of exhaled smoke, the wind of this slinky staircase is showcased within a chimney of alluring atmospheric light.
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Curvaceous complements. Not only is this wooden spiral staircase finished with artfully crafted adjoining curves to its mezzanine, but the living room furniture imitates its grace in curvaceous silhouettes below.
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Clean meets complexity in a fresh white, minimalist spiral staircase concept.
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Maximise light in a limited space with an open tread, small spiral staircase. This piece has a pause in the slimline balustrade halfway up to give access to a partially elevated room.
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A twist in the tale. This helical staircase is constructed with one solid side and one glass side to create an exaggerated twist.
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The tighter twist. Here, we step away from the loose helical to an uber tight torsion. A glossy black finish dramatises the piece.
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Matt black and meandering, a stretched helical staircase dominates a wide open floor plan in an expression of complete professionalism.
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A bronze beauty enchants a double height living space with dark, lustrous allure. A wall of glass bricks allows light to enter behind the construction to further illuminate the show.
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A colour blocked caracol staircase can be achieved with contrasting treads that cut through to the back of the wind.
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The monumental modernist stairs in Palácio Itamaraty by Brazilian legend Oscar Niemeyer.
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Created in contemporary French limestone, this is the world’s first freestanding, 320-degree stone staircase, built by The Stonemasonry Company for a private house in Cheshire.
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Life is full of twists and turns, so why not your staircase? Handrails roam free of balustrades here to fully let loose on those curves.
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Another disconnected design works with two different materials to accentuate twin twisted tracks.
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Boxed edges draw focus to the widest ends of wooden winders here, which make the staircase appear as a piece of intricately crafted furniture.
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Stepping stones. Step off your staircase onto a pebbled bed–or at least create the illusion of doing so with a bridging tread over a textured floor treatment that’s confined within a suitably rounded border.
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A different kind of rounded stone bed is achieved here, with stone tiles cut on their axis to create textural contrast. A rounded stone wall encases the stairwell to exaggerate the effect.
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Create a welcoming highlight. Underlit handrails draw a ribbon of warming illumination that highlights a curving staircase from base to brow.
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Perfectly polished. A combo of smooth wood and polished stone builds a sophisticated statement.
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A Danish architect and developer built a house for himself and his family in Denmark, which features a spectacular spiral staircase design that’s made from a staggering 630 pieces of CNC-cut plywood.
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Curves and core courtyards. An open core is just begging to be filled with an eye-catching focal piece, so why not make it a piece of mother nature’s own architecture with a layered courtyard design.
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This remarkable spiral staircase and courtyard combination tucks textured greenery all the way around the base to peek through the bottom treads.
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The halfway hangout. When a spiral staircase is this big, you might as well make a pitstop. Add some shapely benches where creative colleagues can hang out and collaborate within the inspiring surroundings.
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A low hanging chandelier adds an elegant column of illumination down the centre of a spiralled ascent. Glass sided balustrades allow the glow to pass all the way through, safely highlighting the twisting treads underfoot.
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Make waves with a water feature. The sound of rippling water will carry all the way up the open stairwell to the second floor to create a serene connection across all levels.
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Tactile twists. Cut deep at the risers and shallow underneath, this columnar design is pieced together with hundreds of layers that you just can’t help but want to touch.
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Another chandelier bejewelled spiral, where luxurious black marble steps cut darkly and LED ribbons shine bright.
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With an ET sucked up in a tractor beam, we know we’ve gone space age now. Spaceship-like moulded sides encapsulate a futuristic staircase that would look at home on Star Trek… Or in a cool white minimalist pad invaded by Smart Home add-ons and cutting-edge furniture design.
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Named the Interstellar stairs, optical illusion and awe-inspiring symmetry orbit a core that suggests a floating celestial body.
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Wooden vertebrae make an enormous snaking backbone, like the fossilised remains of an ancient serpent.
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Stacked like thatched straw but as strong as a house of bricks, this extraordinary construction is unfathomable both in scale and in strength.
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Contoured fins mould a freeform outer shell around regular treads and risers here, creating a truly amazing design piece where there could have stood mundanity.
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Spinning out from a central column, steps emerge like wide propellor blades, charged with energy.
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In the community focussed M.I. bookstore in Harbin, China, HMA architects & designers conceived a colossal staircase design and various spatial experiences that all centre around a love for books.
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Material contradiction. An unfeasibly lightweight wireframe column forms the heart of a solid stone staircase, fashioning an interesting contradiction in visual weight.
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This exquisitely detailed spiral is Leonardo da Vinci's double helix staircase, built in 1520. You can find it inside of the Château de Chambord in France.
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Stacked to the rafters. This wood framed spiralling construction features open sided book stacks that provide colour both inside and outside of the enormous stairwell.
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Jogging up and down these stairs would be a little like jumping out of a jet plane… Sleek white streamlined metal spinning from view, and not totally safe.
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Is it a cool balustrade of a dinosaur rib cage? Either way, it would look totally awesome next to a fierce recreation of a velociraptor.
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Petals of solid wood flower into a naturally beautiful spiral design.
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The stuff treehouse dreams are made of. Canopystair is a modular system that attaches around a tree trunk without the use of tools to form an exterior spiral staircase. The system is lightweight and designed to leave the tree free of any damage or marks.
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Railway sleepers stack up a chunky wood grain finish.
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Amazingly, this unusual piece begins its day as an ordinary (extremely tall) chest of drawers. With the push of a button, the chest of drawers swivels out to form a spiral staircase– storage and space saving ingenuity in one.