Lamps as jewellery: the new lighting trend from Milan
11/5/2026
Translation: machine translated
Pictures: Pia Seidel
Silver elements that shimmer. Lamps that swing in corners - almost like a pendant on an earring. A trend was unmistakable at the Milan Design Week: Light is becoming jewellery.
Milan, April 2026: Lights everywhere, but none of them are hanging where you expect them. Instead of in the centre of the room: in a niche and occupying the full height. Less lighting, more gesture.
Interior designer Barbara Reimelt - known from Architectural Digest and Business of Home - already has a term for this: «Lighting like jewellery». Luminaires should feel special, curved, multi-layered, made of mixed materials - just like jewellery.
The chandelier looks anything but taken off the street. Each shade is 3D-printed over 36 hours, layer by layer, in fractal patterns that shape and scatter the light.
Talisman instead of uplighter
The Alcova is one of the most unconventional exhibition platforms at Milan Design Week: abandoned industrial buildings, old villas - a setting that makes a statement in itself. A perfect fit: the collection «Totemic» by Andrea Claire Studio. The hanging lamps are made of Hanji paper. The traditional Korean material is known for its durability and warm-looking transparency. The lights come in natural colours with silver leaf on brass. In various sizes, layered like pearls on a necklace, they take up the whole room. In many cultures, totems are vessels of meaning that are passed down from generation to generation. Here, the lamp takes on this role.
The Andrea Claire Studio stands for sculptural lighting systems at the interface between art and architecture. With «Totemic», Claire looks back on over a decade of research into paper as a lighting material. However, not everything that impressed at the design week was new.
A vintage find as a sign
The third example is not a new design, but a reunion: a pendant lamp called «Sirray» by Kazuhide Takahama, designed for Sirrah in Italy in 1970. It was brought back by Dimore Studio - one of Milan's most influential interior design studios, which creates spaces that cannot be categorised by era.
The fact that Dimore has placed a vintage piece at the centre is no coincidence: the studio is considered a seismograph. What appears there will soon be found elsewhere too.
Whether newly designed or 50 years old: what unites all three is the same idea. Luminaires are allowed to stand out again. They can hang wherever they want, in large numbers - and swing like charms. The ceiling remains the starting point. But the destination is the niche.
This could also dangle in your home
Header image: Pia Seidel
Pia Seidel
Senior Editor
Pia.Seidel@digitecgalaxus.chLike a cheerleader, I love celebrating good design and bringing you closer to everything furniture- and interior design- related. I regularly curate simple yet sophisticated interior ideas, report on trends and interview creative minds about their work.
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