Elements to Consider When Designing Bespoke Hotel Furniture
Designing and creating a piece of bespoke hotel furniture may be out of pragmatic necessity or purely a desire to produce a truly stunning and unique piece of contract furniture.
Whether you are furnishing a historic hotel with oversized rooms that don’t suit standard hotel guest beds or your restaurant bay window requires a piece of banquette seating of very specific dimensions, this never presents a problem for contract interior designers or experienced manufacturers of hotel furniture.
During the product design and manufacturing process, there are a number of elements that should be taken into consideration.
Individuality
Creating bespoke hotel furniture solutions to your hotel design briefs results in an interior that will be like no other. By choosing elements such as the dimensions and shape, to the fabric selection and stain choice, it will be an individual, one of a kind, furniture piece. As a professional specifier, our interior design customers and architects can either design the bespoke piece themselves or consult one of our knowledgeable furniture designers who will help you bring your ideas to life.
However, there is a subtle difference between custom and bespoke furniture. Customised furniture is defined as an existing design that has been modified or altered in a certain way. This usually entails keeping the frame or structure largely the same but making modest alterations. Customising hotel furniture can also include adding extra embellishments such as piping, studding or buttoning.
By contrast, bespoke hotel furniture is a unique piece of furniture that has been created from concept to completion. The concept may well be based on an existing design, but it will be manufactured entirely from scratch. This requires us to compile detailed construction drawings of each component part for our Production team to make. Fundamental components such as dimensions, stability and mechanics are of paramount importance when making the furniture function as it is intended to.
Stunning bespoke pieces can be a focal point for many hotel rooms and increase intrigue amongst guests when they see something unique and out of the ordinary.
Practicality
When it comes to bespoke hotel furniture design, it’s important to remember that furniture should not only be beautiful to the eye, but also robust, functional, and in many cases, adapted to fit within the available space. You should take into consideration the number of guests and traffic that will come into contact with this furniture and how they will interact with it. Your bespoke hotel furniture must strike the age-old balance between form and function.
If you are looking to design exquisite function room seating for your weddings and events, you should consider where these additional chairs will be stored when not in use and if they are easily accessible. Designing a chair that has intricate detailing or armrests may not be the best option when you need to stack unused chairs or store them away as they can become easily damaged or might well not stack at all.
When presenting an idea for bespoke hotel furniture, it’s important to talk to our furniture designers who can recommend proven solutions that will address all your contract needs.
Quality
Bespoke hotel furniture, although designed from scratch, still needs to meet all the stringent standards for contract furniture. Critical joints will be glued, screwed and dowelled for strength. The upholstery and fabrics you choose must comply with fire regulations. Fabrics can be treated in order for them to become fire retardant and meet severe contract standards or you can select a fabric from a vast range of specialist contract fabric suppliers.
The fabric that you have chosen to upholster your furniture with will also need to be able to withstand continual use. Contract fabric has a minimum requirement of 40,000 rubs when tested using the Martindale abrasion test. This signifies that the fabric can withstand being in contact with something, 40,000 times before it starts to show signs of wear. This is ideal for a high traffic environment such as hotels, bars or restaurants.
