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6 Quick Refurb Ideas for Hoteliers

6 Quick Refurb Ideas for Hoteliers

by Mark Bithrey
June 2020

Cost-Effective Hotel Interior Design Upgrades 

With the hospitality industry set to reopen around the world soon, this is the best time to be thinking about those refurb projects you’ve been putting on the back burner. 

If you turned your hotel upside down, everything that falls out is easy, quick, and low-cost to upgrade. It is possible to give your hotel a whole new look and feel, by subtracting and introducing a few elements. It’s not too late for your July reopening!

Walls

Walls speak to guests in their rooms, in the restaurants, and in the common areas of your hotel. Upgrade your wallpapers, modernise with solid colours, get new on-brand art, or think about murals and illustrations. With the right design, you can refresh walls for a bargain. I also recommend adding mirrors at strategic spots to build in illusions of space, and allow for some theatricality. 

For our clients at the Fiskebar at the Ritz-Carlton Geneva, we were tasked with creating a focal piece for this wall. We took inspiration from Nordic landscapes tones, crustaceans, mountain birds, and eggshell colourations, to inform our textures. The artisanal plates were bespoke, bringing these stunning visual elements together on the wall.

Floors

It may not seem like it, but floors can make a room look bigger or smaller, cozy or corporate, modern or traditional. Do your floors look dated? Is it time to rip out the old carpet and replace it with stylish new ones? Can you find a single beautiful rug to add to the canvas? Depending on your location and style, tiles can also be explored. 

For our clients at Brasserie Bellanger we chose bespoke tiling, and for the Cinnamon Club, we went with soft rugs for accents.

Lights

Lighting can make or break your hotel’s spaces. When we worked on the lighting for The Prince Akatoki, we built in the ability for the guest to dim and brighten as they liked. It illuminated the wall from behind the beds, mimicking the sunrise and sunset. 

Top Tip: Even something as simple as changing lampshades can have a transformative effect on bedrooms, restaurants, lobbies – with minimal investment!

Furniture

This is a good time to relook at your furniture. Think: comfort, durability, versatility, distancing. Well-designed and curated furniture will uplift your spaces. Talk to me about chair and table heights, I will go on forever. 

Soft Furnishings

Time to throw out those old sheets and duvet covers, and those dated cushions. Upgrade to 1000 thread count sheets, modern, easy to clean curtains and drapes, and introduce accented cushions to elevate various rooms. 

It’s important to think about all these elements cohesively. Are you adding artwork to your walls? Introducing new tableware or bric-a-brac? As designers, we often think of soft furnishings and styling together. 

Styling

General Managers, this one’s especially for you. We’ve helped loads of clients style their spaces after architects have left bare shelves and niches to be filled – for the GMs to sort out. Now as designers we are no experts at running hotel operations, just as you shouldn’t be expected to spend time figuring out what kind of artworks to source!

We’ve worked with clients like Levi Roots, the Champions sports bar in Frankfurt, and The Pickled Hen at the Marriott Marble Arch in London to visualise, curate, style, and display elements that add character. 

Drop me a note to chat about a quick refresh of your hotel’s spaces:
mark@b3designers.co.uk.

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