Switched on

Effective and versatile lighting is now vital for any quality hotel that wants to create a unique atmosphere.

With the current bias towards a knowingly cosmopolitan lifestyle, the hotel “sojourn” has become the ultimate stylish experience. Urban hotels in particular have become theatrical stages in which the discerning traveller plays a part against a backdrop of Charles and Ray Eames furnishing, low-level ambient light and discreet 24-hour service. And, indeed, if hotels are the new theatre of this decadent millennium, then lighting design reveals the stage.

But it isn’t only the Ian Schrager, top of the range kind of hotels getting the bespoke, sophisticated lighting treatment. Although the Sanderson and St Martins Lane hotels in London, illuminated by light maestro Arnold Chan, remain undisputed champions of experimental lighting design, innovation is crossing over to all hotel categories. According to Sally Storey, design director at Lighting Design International, many of the lighting features created for London’s One Aldwych Hotel are now being requested elsewhere by other clients, such as the Hotel Hyatt Madeleine in Paris. “These ideas are beginning to infiltrate and are now even expected,” she says. The colour-changing scheme, devised by Chan for St Martins Lane Hotel’s bedrooms, is so popular that when his company Isometrix launched it, under the name of ColourWash at The 100% Design show in London, it was inundated with requests.

For Jonathan Speirs, director at Lighting Architects Group (Speirs and Major, and Jonathan Speirs and Associates), this is a natural progression. “Customers expect a better environment. The global spread of companies such as the Ong empire means restaurant-goers who have eaten at Nobu in New York, expect the same quality in Nobu London,” he says.

Yet hotel habitués aren’t only high-class flyers. The increase of business travelling and the growing popularity of holidaymaking means that hotels are now part of many people’s lives. Maurice Brill, director of Maurice Brill Lighting Design, says designers have to remember that hotels mean different things to different people. “On one hand, you have the hardened business man, who is on expenses travelling all the time, who wants a facility, but also to be able to relax. At the other end [of the spectrum], you have the honeymoon couple, who expect a sense of occasion and then you have holidaymakers, for whom you are giving a change of mood and atmosphere – they have probably saved up all year for this. It has to be all things to all people.” As a consequence, catering for your customer is about understanding the nuances that occur throughout what is effectively a 24-hour environment. Checking-in in the middle of the night, using meeting rooms for business, having a coffee in the morning and a brandy later in the evening in the same bar, means that lighting has to invent solutions that go beyond what the space offers. “If you have a multipurpose space, you can’t say, ‘right, we are going to do this’,” explains Marc Major, director at Lighting Architects Group. “We will design a basic background, and then provide enough flexibility so that the client can change it,” says Brill. “You have to think not only of the visitor, but of the operator, how it can manage and [technically] maintain the space,” he adds.

From the façade to the entrance and throughout the various public areas, lighting may literally highlight the customers’ first impression of the hotel. “How lighting and architecture work together is vital,” says Speirs. “You walk into a space and you have to achieve that ‘wow’ look.” Lighting is what gets a building noticed, an entrance enticing and a lobby welcoming. Lighting lobbies is crucial in setting the tone for the deluxe nomadic existence. This is, after all, where the action takes place. “There is nothing worse than people standing around confused, asking ‘Where do I go next?’,” says Speirs. “You have to achieve the wayfinding element without a big neon sign saying ‘bar here’,” he adds. There needs to be progression, from the outside into the inside, down to all the smaller details, such as if you can you read the menu in the restaurant, if your food looks absolutely fabulous, or if your head makes a shadow on your plate”

But what about the bedrooms, those havens of tranquillity where customers expect to get their money’s worth? “Bedrooms are becoming much more [like] executive bedrooms, in need of specialist’s reading lights,” says Storey. “For One Aldwych Hotel, we devised a fibre optic reading light, which is becoming much more the norm [in other hotels]. Another feature that is coming across is a low-level light, which you can put on at night so you can go to the loo at any moment. It’s very understated, and the light can either be recessed in the skirting, or concealed under the bedside table,” says Storey.

For Kit Kemp, design director at Firmdale Hotel group, and arguably the promoter of the boutique hotel concept here in the UK with locations such as the Charlotte Street Hotel and the Covent Garden Hotel, little details count. “You should always have lights inside wardrobes, to help distinguish navy tights from black ones. In the area where you have a minibar, you should be able to see the clear glass. Bathrooms should have concealed lighting behind the mirrors to avoid misting.” Just like interiors, lighting design is also subject to fashion fads. The aforementioned Isometrix ColourWash system is one of the current favourites. A series of low-voltage tungsten halogen lamps with spread lenses that can be regulated through a manual dimmer by the client into a spectrum of 256 colours, the system has had the merit of popularising colour use in lighting design.

Although “colour therapy” is better used in minimalist, pared down interiors, it is now crossing over to that other fertile area for lighting design: retail. Dramatic façade lighting, projectors, well-considered automatic dimming systems, low-energy lamps and a striving towards creating a mesmerising atmosphere in the subtlest way, are some of the current lighting “tricks”. Speirs sums it up: “Lighting a hotel is about making people look great and the spaces look wonderful. Sounds corny, but it’s true.”

see also

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“DW200011170054”

“DW200011170055”

Further reading:

Designing With Light: Hotels by Jill Entwistle, published by Rotovision, priced £39.95.

Lighting Design by Carl Gardner and Barry Hannaford, published by Lund Humphries, priced £55.

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