A Touch of Flair: 5 Tips for Decorating Your Lobby

The lobby is the first thing guests will see when they enter a hotel, so it’s important to make a good impression. A well-designed, perfectly decorated lobby should reflect the hotel and its values. This article will offer five tips to hotel owners who want to spruce things up without spending a fortune on full remodels.

Think About the Big Picture

The lobby should have a unified design that reflects the hotel’s brand. For hotel owners with elegant, traditional rooms, that could mean chandeliers and extravagant wall coverings. But, for modern spaces, those measures would be inappropriate. Hotel owners who want to create a more contemporary design can check out kireiusa.com to learn about one company that offers visually stunning products designed not just to look incredible but also to improve the acoustics of any room.

Leave Plenty of Space

Guests need room to orient themselves when entering the hotel lobby, so don’t crowd too much furniture or decorative elements into space. The reception desk should be easily visible from the door, not blocked by seating areas, and the lobby should have plenty of space for maneuvering unwieldy luggage. When choosing a layout, hotel owners should keep the primary functions of the spaces at the front of their minds and design accordingly.

Choose a Color Palette

The first thing to consider when choosing a color palette is the hotel’s brand. For elegant, upscale hotels, wood paneling and a neutral color scheme will offer a formal appeal. More contemporary hotels might benefit from incorporating colors from the brand’s logo or color scheme in the form of accent walls, art, furniture, or other types of decor.

Don’t have dedicated experience with interior design and worried about how to come up with a color palette? An online color generator will make this part of the job much easier.

Get the Lighting Right

The first thing most hotel owners think about when undertaking lobby redecoration projects isn’t lighting, but maybe it should be. Harsh, a white light will make any lobby look foreboding, while warm light will make guests feel comfortable, welcome, and relaxed.

Owners with lobbies that feature seating areas shouldn’t rely only on overhead lighting. Place the seating areas close to windows to take advantage of natural light, and add task lights and accent lighting as needed to make sure the space feels bright and warm.

Choosing Furniture

The furniture found in the lobby should be comfortable, durable, and beautiful. Purchase furnishings that fit the color palette as described above and add a welcoming feel to the lobby. Nobody wants to sit on hard plastic, so don’t skimp on the furnishings.

Guests who have just arrived after a long trip may need someplace to sit and relax before checking in, and those who are planning a big day out seeing the sights will need someplace to wait for the arrival of their cabs. It’s worth spending some extra money on comfortable furniture to accommodate their needs.

The Bottom Line

Decorating a hotel lobby requires balancing function with fashion. This is true of every aspect of the design, from furniture to lighting and even art. The lobby should be welcoming, well-lit, and on-brand to ensure it makes a great first impression and sticks out in guests’ minds so they’ll want to return in the future.