Boutique Design | boutiquedesign.com

(November / December 2011) posted on Wed Dec 14, 2011

Designers detail how they turned two big-brand hotels into unique boutiques, including Hotel FIVE (shown), and added a farm-to-table vibe to an urban eatery.

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By Matthew Hall

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Renovations are all the rage these days, and the following trio of projects—two hotels and a restaurant—vividly reflect the transformative power of design. First up is Interior Design International’s conversion of a bland Ramada into the visually charged Hotel FIVE, followed by a look at how the design staff at Hanford Hotels Inc. turned a comfortable-but-dated Holiday Inn into a posh boutique. The restaurant in question is Perennial Virant, 555 International’s makeover of a three-year old eatery into a memorable member of the farm-to-table movement.

Hotel FIVE, Seattle

Any interior designer embarking on a renovation project has to deal with the basic “bones” of the space involved. In the case of Hotel FIVE, a new boutique in downtown Seattle, that meant a concrete-block building that formerly housed a Ramada. “The word ‘bunker’ came to mind when I first saw the space,” says Stephanie Ellis-Carmody, a senior designer at Interior Design International (IDI). “The hotel was functional, but hardly memorable.”

To help the hotel stand out from several nearby branded competitors, it was rechristened the Hotel FIVE (in honor of its location on downtown Seattle’s 5th Avenue) and IDI outfitted the property with a slew of bright colors and distinctive graphics of Seattle landmarks, as well as visual plays on the numeral 5. “We turned its interior into a study of color and contrast,” says Ellis-Carmody. “We used a pure palette of saturated primary colors to visually energize its various spaces. We then layered in some contrast in the form of intense graphics that were custom-designed to help give the hotel a strong sense of place.”

That approach is everywhere in the building—including its elevators. The doors bear an oversized graphic of the cross-street signs found outside the hotel, and when the doors open, they reveal walls covered with a graphic map of Seattle that pinpoints the hotel’s site.

The Hotel Hanford, Costa Mesa, Calif.

For the past 16 years, Hanford Hotels Inc. has focused on buying underperforming hotels and repositioning them under such well-known brands as Fairfield Inns, LaQuinta, Holiday Inn and Hilton. But the hotelier had different plans for a Holiday Inn it had operated in Orange County, Calif., for more than a decade. That 231-key property has been converted into a new boutique concept called The Hotel Hanford.