Our 8 Top Tips for Lighting Dark Hotel Rooms

Dark hotel rooms can negatively impact on a guest’s hotel experience; however, this can be easily turned around by a few simple touches. Here’s our tips on how to make your hotel bedrooms (and guests!) lighter, brighter and happier, using your loose hotel furniture.

1. Dark hotel bedrooms will naturally lighten up by using soft, light shades on the walls and ceilings. If re-decoration is not an option, pair loose hotel furniture made of lighter coloured materials with delicate neutral bed linen to lift a dark atmosphere.
2. Be selective with your furniture choices. Choose open legged coffee tables and chairs with plenty of clear space rather than bulky pieces.
3. Opt for open hanging units where possible rather than solid wardrobes, allowing a little light through casegood units can make quite a difference to a dark bedroom.
4. Mix and match colours - rich neutrals and white together create the perfect balance. Colours such as espresso brown mixed with camel brown or mushroom grey work great together for a sleek modern colour palette. These neutral shades work especially well against dark wooden floors.
5. Mirrors are the ideal accessory to naturally reflect light across hotel bedrooms. Pick the perfect mirror to match your hotel’s style. Whether it be large and grand, vintage or subtle, mirrors do not just open up a room, enhance the size and light easily and effectively, but can be integrated into the design of the bedroom casegoods; like wrapping an L-shaped mirror around a desk. Using this option then multi-tasks as a vanity mirror and a full length mirror. However, maximising light into a bedroom with mirrors can ultimately increase the housekeeping time. Think of the practicalities of cleaning and make sure adding an oversized mirror is still within easy reaching distance for your housekeeping staff to keep clean.
6. Add some metallic touches to your décor and furniture, the reflective nature of the material will create a gentle illumination.
7. To brighten up a specific dark area of a hotel bedroom, accent lighting is the perfect solution. Pendant fixtures across a desk or near a mirror will subtly lighten up those hidden corners. Floor lamps and floor lights as well as ceiling lights will instantly provide that needed glow if your hotel bedrooms are short of natural light.
8. When choosing lights for your hotel rooms, open lights will provide the best lumination for darker areas, such as chandeliers, spot lighting, pendants, or flush lighting for en-suite bathrooms. Open lights with no closed or dark lamp shades are a sure way to ensure your rooms are kept light and bright. If you do have recessed lights make sure you choose LED bulbs for a brighter option.