The value of good guest room lighting design

Our Managing Director, Kevin Winstanley, considers the value of good guest room lighting design and why it should be a priority for interior designers.

How’s your mood these days?

In the seemingly never-ending doom and gloom of a tedious winter lock down, we’ve all got used to being asked how we feel.

“A bit of daylight wouldn’t go a miss…” or “Be nice to get some sunshine” are regular responses (along with of course, “Can’t wait for the kids to go back!”)

The sun. The light.  It has a positive mood-altering effect – the perfect sunrise, the perfect sunset, without question add emotional value to any moment.

Good lighting design includes good lighting control

Good lighting design also provides emotional value-add. And I don’t just mean clever shadow lighting with led strips, or fancy bulbs. I mean being able to set the lighting to suit the mood.  

Its why I often cringe when entering a hotel room, to find an array of on/off light switches by the bed, none of which are seemingly connected in any logical order to the lighting areas of the room itself.  Even when you do discover the magical sequence to turn them on or off, that’s precisely what they are: ON or OFF.  It doesn’t matter how elegant the fittings are if they don’t provide mood lighting.

Cutting corners on lighting is false economy

If – as a hotelier or a lighting designer – you are going to spend money on expensive curtains, carpets, beds, pillows, towels and furniture in a hotel guest room, why not light it properly and ensure that it’s easy for the guest to achieve the lighting mood they want to watch TV and relax, or get ready for the day?

Corners are often cut to enable budgets to be met and often the cost saving, when it should in fact be the last, is lighting design.  Everything – and I mean everything – looks better when its well-lit.  

Don’t believe me?  then consider this; Could the Eiffel Tower be any more French? 

At 11pm on a balmy Parisian night, Eiffel’s monument to the city lights up blue, white and red – the colours of the French Tricolour – proudly stating its presence and international notoriety at the heart of the capital. Or consider the brooding brow of Abraham Lincoln emphasised by the gentle soft up lighting as he seems to contemplate the weight of history atop reflections of the WW2 memorial and the Washington Monument ahead.

In fact, any monument you care to mention is almost certainly better seen at night.  The lighting adds presence; the lighting design provides emotional value add. 

Can you put a financial value on good lighting design?

Let’s not be ethereal about these things, let’s put a price on it.  How much more is a beautifully lit guest room worth?  £10 a night, £50? Let’s say £25.  That sounds like a reasonable figure on a room that would normally book at £150.  At 70% average occupancy over 12 months that’s an extra £6,400 per year per room, or the equivalent of another 64 days’ worth of bookings.  

Its undoubtedly hard to put a price on, but even if your view is that it’s a quarter of that figure, that’s not a corner I would consider cutting, had I thought about the actual value before taking a red pen to my project costs.

So, well designed lighting and lighting control has emotional value for your guests, but also financial value for your balance sheet. Invest at build stage. It will put a smile on everyone’s face.

Learn more about VIVID’s lighting control portfolio here.