Guest bathrooms help complete an experience

When guests travel, they depend on the hotel to provide him or her with a great experience—from customer service to comfortable beds, and the bathroom is no different. In fact, many hotels are trying to provide their guests with a luxurious, spa-like experience without leaving the guestroom.

“It’s the infusion of all elements that have to relate to the spa and increasing the experience of rest, calmness, relaxation, decompression—all of those wonderful things that you seek when you want to escape and retreat and really pamper yourself,” said Dionne Jefferson, senior interior design manager for Courtyard by Marriott and SpringHill Suites by Marriott. “Anything that helps that happen, either aesthetically or through the senses, is being infused in bathroom design.”

To start, the use of a shower rather than a shower-tub combination gives guests more space, and space equates to luxury in a hotel room.

Additionally, to give the guest bath a spa-like feel, Hotel Indigo uses large, decorative mirrors and upscale lighting like sconces and pendant lighting, said Janis Cannon, VP of global brand management.

“Lighting itself is huge in any room, in any design, but in the bathroom it becomes critical,” Jefferson said. “You need it in order to be functional and beneficial for the guest’s use, but now it’s about mood, too.” The SpringHill bathrooms offer controls to make the light brighter or dimmer, and there is more than one light switch in each bathroom to provide the brightness each guest desires.

Other tactics Jefferson and the design team at SpringHill Suites implemented to give the “experiential” vibe included the creation of a “water closet” to separate the toilet from the other bath areas, the use of teak on the vanity fronts, built-in cubicles for towels, bath towels and the hair dryer, a “mirror-on-mirror” concept and barn doors rather than spring doors.