10 Modern Chess Sets To Light Up Any House

You know, maybe it's just me, but every time I went near my grandfather's prized chess collection room, I felt like I was in a movie. Tell me if this doesn't remind you of an adventure flick with Freddie Highmore. A kid, curious about a sealed room, locked from the outside, and the only key is on her grandfather's neck. He warns the kid to stay away, as the items inside are "dangerous," which piques your interest more, and your imagination runs wild, and you come up with an elaborate ruse to break into the room and discover the hidden treasure.

Can you picture the kid opening the door, a golden hue covering her face as she gasps in wonderment?

Alright, it wasn't as cinematic as I make it sound, and it for sure wasn't a room bathed in golden sunlight.

But it was a special room that held both ancient and modern chess sets, my grandfather's prized possessions. The only reason we weren't allowed in was that... well, our hands were sticky with either mud or candy.

There wasn't any hidden treasure per se, but it sure made the room magical and captivating.

Now, my goal is to help you create and emulate the same feeling in your home. I believe a beautifully carved chess set can light up a room in an instant.

So if you're feeling as adventurous as I did back then, read on.

What Makes a Modern Chess Set Different From a Traditional One?

Before we get into the sets themselves, I want to talk briefly about the contemporary chess set design landscape, because it's genuinely broader than most people realize.

Don't you think modern chess sets sit across a wide spectrum? Some draw on the proportions of an architectural chess set. Others lean into high-end wooden craftsmanship with luxury modern materials. Some happily embrace the monochrome aesthetic completely.

What unites all the modern chess sets worth owning is the same thing that made my grandfather lock that room: they carry genuine character.

1. The DGT Pegasus Electronic Chess Board

The DGT Pegasus is the kind of smart electronic chessboard that makes you do a double take. (It made me!)

If you look at it closely, you'll see it looks like a regular board.

It's clean, measured, elegant, with 1.575-inch squares on a 14x14-inch footprint. But wait till you realize it's connected via Bluetooth to Chess.com and Lichess, which lets you play against opponents worldwide without staring at a screen.

Your opponent's moves arrive via pulsing LED rings directly on the board.

The board is made in Holland and Spain and uses built-in sensory piece recognition to detect every move.

The pieces are DGT-designed with their own distinctive modern silhouette. The whole combination creates a playing experience that feels genuinely different from anything I've encountered.

2. The Rechapados Ferrer Black Olive Chess Set

Since 1959, Rechapados Ferrer has been making chess boards in Spain with a level of attention that most factories come nowhere near.

The Black Olive combination pairs the warm, organic grain of olive wood against the deep near-black of black tulipie. Look at how the two Mediterranean woods have completely different personalities but somehow find perfect harmony on a 20x20-inch board.

This is high-end wooden craftsmanship in the most literal sense. The grain in olive wood moves differently from any other timber in chess. Notice how it swirls, shifts, and catches light at angles that make each square look slightly alive.

The dark tulipie squares anchor everything with an almost architectural seriousness. The lead-weighted pieces with billiard cloth bases give the set its ergonomic piece weighting and physical authority, and the set arrives in a double magnetic-closure case that holds everything together with the kind of restraint that confident luxury always has.

As a decorative centerpiece display, this set is genuinely stunning.

3. The Grandmaster Series Blue Gilded

I think most chess sets play it safe with the color palette... but the Grandmaster Series Blue Gilded does not.

The board features Blue Erable dark squares and Bird's Eye Maple light squares in a gloss finish. It sits somewhere between slate and indigo, cool and architectural, giving the whole board a contemporary chess set design that makes it look more like a gallery object than a game surface.

The pieces are a modern Staunton variation hand carved by master artisans: a 4.0-inch king with a 1.625-inch base, heavily weighted, with billiard cloth base pads and the kind of finish that rewards close inspection.

The median set weight of 40.8 ounces means these pieces have real presence in the hand.

The combination comes with a slide-top chess box in your choice of mahogany, black, or luxe exotic wood finishes.

4. The Magnus Carlsen Signature Casket Chess Set

I want to tell you something about this one that I find genuinely clever.

The Magnus Carlsen Signature Casket solves a problem that every chess collector eventually runs into: where do you store your pieces without a separate box taking up space? The answer here is the board itself.

The casket features ingenious internal foam storage compartments meticulously integrated into the chess board. It's tailor-made to cradle and protect each chess piece. It eliminates the need for a separate chess box entirely.

The casket features Magnus Carlsen's signature silkscreened on both sides.

5. The Grandmaster Regal Series

When you look at the chess set, I think you'd agree that the word "regal" in the name is doing real work here.

The Grandmaster Regal Series brings rosewood dark squares and maple light squares together in a combination that chess players have trusted for generations.

This is the set for the player who wants luxury modern materials and high-end wooden craftsmanship without the noise of unusual colorways.

Sometimes the most sophisticated choice in contemporary chess set design is the one that has been refined over 175 years until it reached exactly the right point.

6. The Reykjavik II Series Tournament Chess Set

In 1972, Bobby Fischer sat across from Boris Spassky in Reykjavik, Iceland, and played a match that stopped the world.

The Reykjavik II Series is an exact reproduction of the chess set that was on the board for that match. The design is an exact reproduction of the Chess set used by the legendary American Grandmaster Bobby Fischer when he won the 1972 World Chess Championship against the reigning World Champion Grandmaster Boris Spassky in Reykjavik, Iceland.

The Chess set has been designed to withstand years of use and abuse, as it lacks many of the ornate details commonly found on Chess Sets that can be susceptible to damage in the heat of battle.

That design philosophy gives the Reykjavik II its quietly modern sensibility.

This is the set for the player who understands that the greatest chess match of the 20th century was played on this exact silhouette, and wants that history on their table every single day.

7. The Zagreb '59 Series Gilded

The Zagreb 1959 tournament produced one of the most beautiful chess sets in competitive history. And the Gilded Zagreb '59 Series carries that legacy with gold accents that lift the whole combination into genuine luxury territory.

The pieces feature gilded detailing that catches light differently depending on the angle. It's a design choice that blurs the line between contemporary chess set design and decorative centerpiece display in the most satisfying way.

Heavily weighted chessmen with billiard cloth bases sit on the board with the confidence of pieces that know they belong there.

If the Reykjavik II represents Fischer's aesthetic, the Zagreb '59 represents the European elegance of the same era.

8. The Isle of Lewis Set

The Lewis Chessmen are among the most famous chess pieces in the world. Carved from walrus ivory in 12th-century Norway, discovered in the Scottish Outer Hebrides in 1831, and now split between the British Museum and the National Museum of Scotland.

They represent something genuinely extraordinary in chess history.

The Isle of Lewis set is a faithful reproduction crafted in high-quality resin. It captures the textured, carved quality of the originals with the solid weight and tactile character. This is abstract piece symbolism at its most vivid, a set that carries 900 years of chess history onto any surface it sits on.

9. The Library Club Grandmaster Set

This chess set is for the player who wants everything a serious chess set needs and nothing it doesn't.

The monochrome aesthetic of the natural boxwood and ebonized pieces against a traditional board creates exactly the kind of visual clarity that makes a chess set usable for hours without eye fatigue. This is the set I'd recommend for anyone setting up a dedicated chess corner in their home.

10. Chess for Three

You might think that the Chess for Three set might be the most genuinely surprising entry on this list.

Chess is a game built around confrontation between two minds. But Chess for Three reimagines the board entirely, right? It has a hexagonal playing surface accommodating three armies simultaneously.

It comes with three sets of differently coloured pieces and a board geometry that makes every game a new political puzzle. Who do you attack? Who do you ally with temporarily? When do alliances break?

As contemporary chess set design goes, the three-player format is the most radical departure from tradition here. The abstract piece symbolism of three differently coloured armies on a single board is very visually striking.

As a conversation piece in a home, it's genuinely unparalleled. Every person who sees it immediately asks the same thing: how does that work?

And then they want to find out.