Cool cascade. This solid swirling white railing breaks into a cascade of concrete at its base, where heavy steps seem to float absolutely lightly.

Turn up the heat to increase the color. Hardened steel shines an incredible shade of deep purple with rainbow flares, making this heat-treated balustrade an amazingly focused piece within a quiet monochrome setting.

If you’re hungry for even more color, then augment your shiny spiral staircase project with a finished rainbow finish around the coils.

Looking like it exploded from the swirling sky of Edvard Munch’s painting, The Cry, this artistic free-form staircase is streaked with strikingly colored slices.

Red rails. Bright red steps hang without risers in this fabulously unique spiral staircase design that is suspended over a contrasting green courtyard with its own stepped edge. Colored coordinated furniture accumulates a supporting palette nearby.

Cast gold. This seductive stair design drips a luxurious golden melt through a light-filled staircase, where the sun’s rays accentuate its magnificently rich luster.

As an untouched play about a Girl with a Picasso mandolin, this abstract modern staircase combines curves with the cubism of straight enclosed lifts and boxed landing areas.

Layers of luxury. A striking feature wall or tailored bookcase from floor to ceiling makes the ideal high accompaniment to an elegant spiral staircase installation.

Snail shell chic. The indentations under this fabulous wheeled ladder installation create the aesthetics of an untangled helical shell.

Rising like a trickle of exhaled smoke, the wind from this slender staircase is displayed inside a chimney of attractive atmospheric light.

Curved complements. This wooden spiral staircase is not only finished with artfully created curves adjacent to its mezzanine, but the living room furniture mimics its grace with curved silhouettes underneath.

Purity encounters complexity in a fresh white, minimalist spiral staircase concept.

Maximize light in a limited space by an open step, a small spiral staircase. This piece has a break in the slender railing halfway to give access to a partially elevated room.

A twist in the story. This helical staircase is constructed with one solid side and one glass side to create an exaggerated twist.

The stricter twist. Here we step from the loose helical to uber tight torsion. A glossy black finish dramatizes the piece.

Matt black and a winding, taut spiral staircase dominates a wide-open floor plan in an expression of complete professionalism.

A bronze beauty enchants a double high living space with a dark, shiny allure. A glass brick wall allows light to enter behind the building to further illuminate the show.

A colored blocked spiral staircase can be reached by contrasting steps that cut up to the back wind.

The monumental modernist staircase in Itamaraty Palace by Brazilian legend Oscar Niemeyer.

Created in contemporary French limestone, this is the world’s first self-contained 320-degree stone staircase, built by The Stonemasonry Company for a private house in Cheshire.

Life is full of twists and turns, so why not your stairs? Crawlers wander without railings here to fully loosen on those curves.

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• Designer: YYDG Interiors

Another disconnected design works with two different materials to accentuate twin twisted tracks.

Box edges draw attention to the wider ends of wooden windings here, which make the staircase appear as a piece of intricately crafted furniture.

Pebbles. Step off your stairs onto a pebble bed – or at least create an illusion of it by stepping over a textured floor treatment that is confined within a properly rounded border.

A different kind of rounded stone bed is achieved here, with stone tiles cut on their axis to create a text contrast. A rounded stone wall encloses the staircase to exaggerate the effect.

Create a welcome highlight. Underlined backs draw a ribbon of warming light that highlights a curved staircase from base to forehead.

Perfectly polished. A combination of smooth wood and polished stone builds a complex statement.

A Danish architect and developer has built a house for himself and his family in Denmark, which features a spectacular spiral staircase project, made from swaying 630 pieces of CNC-cut plywood.

Curves and core yards. An open core only begs to fill it with a striking focal piece, so why not make it a piece of mother nature’s own architecture with a layered courtyard design.

This remarkable spiral staircase and courtyard combination covers textured greenery around the base to peek through the bottom steps.

The halfway house. When a spiral staircase is so big, you could also make a resting place. Add some well-appointed benches where creative colleagues can relate to and collaborate within the inspirational environment.

A low hanging chandelier adds an elegant light column along the center of a spiral ascent. Glass side railings allow the gloss to pass through completely, safely highlighting the twisting steps underfoot.

Make waves with water feature. The sound of rippling water will carry you all the way up the open staircase to the second floor to create a serene connection through all levels.

Tactile twists. Cut deep at the risers and shallow underneath, this column design is put together with hundreds of layers that you just can’t help but want to touch.

Another chandelier jeweled spiral, with luxurious black marble steps darkly cut and LED ribbons glowing brightly.

With ET sucked into a tractor beam, we know we’re now past a space age. Spacecraft molded sides encapsulate a futuristic staircase that would look at home at Star Trek … Or in a cool white minimalist pad invaded by Smart Home add-ons and cutting-edge furniture.

Called the Interstellar Staircase, optical illusion and awesome symmetry orbit a core that suggests a floating celestial body.

Wooden vertebrae make an enormous serpentine spine, like the fossilized remains of an ancient serpent.

Stacked like thatched straw but as strong as a brick house, this extraordinary construction is unfathomable both in scale and in strength.

Curved fins mold a free-form outer shell around regular strides and lifts here, creating a truly amazing project piece where worldliness could stand.

Sliding out of a central pillar, steps appear as wide helical blades, charged with energy.

At the MI bookstore in the community, in binarbin, China, HMA architects and designers have come up with a colossal staircase project and various space experiences that are all about love of books.

Material contradiction. An impossibly light wire column forms the heart of a solid stone staircase, forming an interesting contradiction in visual weight.

This very detailed spiral is Leonardo da Vinci’s double spiral staircase, built in 1520. You can find it inside the Castle of Chambord in France.

Stacked to the roof beams. This wood framed spiral construction features open side books that give color both inside and outside the huge staircase.

Trotting up and down these stairs is a bit like jumping a jet plane … An elegant white streamlined metal turning from sight, and not entirely safe.

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• Display: Andrew McConnell

Is it a cool balustrade of a dinosaur thorax? Either way it would look absolutely amazing next to a furious amusement of a speedometer.

Petals of solid wood flower in a naturally beautiful spiral design.

The things from tree house dreams are made. Canopystair is a modular system that attaches around a tree trunk without the use of tools to form an external spiral staircase. The system is lightweight and designed to leave the tree free of damage or marks.

Rail sleepers stack a thick wooden grain end.

Amazingly, this unusual piece begins its day as an ordinary (extremely high) commode. At the push of a button, the drawer rotates to form a spiral staircase – storing and saving space in one.