What to Consider When Looking at Hospitality Lighting

Hotel lighting is quite an important but overlooked feature in hospitality. It can be the make or break for walk-ins and should be held to a higher standard as the costs associated with small mistakes can be rather high. Avoid mistakes and losing thousands of dollars, or even a lawsuit, by reading on:

Wattage and Efficiency Requirements
Most of the time, electrical engineers will plan energy requirements while planning switches and circuits. When a light replacement comes up, the change in power draw could cause huge problems like changes in electrical plans, delays and wasting money on connections you can’t use anymore. To avoid this, make sure to discuss with an electrical engineer before making any changes to plans.

Safety Standards
This is the most important part and should be the first priority. Sacrificing safety standards can really put your customers in danger and you will most likely fail inspection and have to reorder completely new lighting, which will cost a lot.

The following is a lighting guide to assist you in lighting up all hotels areas appropriately:

Lobby and Reception
These are the two spaces in which hotels welcome their guests for the first time, so it is important that they stand out. This space is where a hotel has the chance to really express its uniqueness as a brand through its architecture, design, and ambiance. It’s necessary to include flexible and controlled lighting options to create a specific atmosphere.

Restaurants and Conference Rooms
An open, striking design is particularly important in the dining and entertainment areas. Lighting must emphasize the event in some way or another, while also serving a wide range of purposes.

Hallways
Hallways will lead guests to their rooms so adjusted lighting can stop the hallways from looking like a tunnel and make the walk more inviting and safe for guests. Hotel owners must respect emergency lighting regulations and will need to be using the halls themselves as well as other staff, so adjusting lighting levels for their comfort to help them work better is also important.

Guest Rooms
Hotel rooms are for sleep, work, eating, relaxing and so much more. The lighting layout should reflect this variety of uses while giving guests options to meet most or all of these functions.

 PTY Lighting specializes in custom LED lighting installations in the hospitality industry – get in touch today to see how we can help.

Bespoke Custom Hotel Lobby Lighting

When you first walk into a hotel, the first room you will walk into is the lobby. This is a hotel’s first impression, as guests see it first and may sit there, spending some time in the area. It is important that it looks and feels right. Lighting designers love to work on hotel lobbies because it can bring some unique opportunities and challenges. A hotel lobby is an area of many uses and should be warm, welcoming and a setting on behalf of the hotel. The lobby can give guests a taste of the hotel’s overall style and vibe, through a luxurious space. It should be able to change its look from day to night. The best way to set the mood of a room is lighting. Here are some ways to keep your corners lit and your low tables bright:

Welcoming Light

In more luxurious hotels, a good lobby will make people feel comfortable and welcome while at the same time reinforcing their hotel choice. For a hotel that gets walk-ins, the lobby they walk into could be the make or break to whether or not they stay. In most cases, hotels prefer to use soft warm lighting that is more yellow than white or blue.

Practical Light

A hotel lobby is a hive of activity and can see a variety of people pass through it, all with their own agenda. Whether it’s staff waiting for guests or meetings, it is important that practicality is not sacrificed for style. Guests and staff will need to be able to easily navigate through the lobby with luggage. Wall lights and LED guide strips can focus light in key areas such as the check-in desk, walkways, and the various seating areas. Creating both paths and pools of light will make guests feel more comfortable and relaxed when staying at the hotel.

Extraordinary Light

The hotel lobby is a fantastic place to communicate a brand’s overall style. Lobby lighting is a great place for designers to display flair and tact and combine practicality with aesthetic. Bespoke lighting creates a truly unique atmosphere and a look worthy of those glossy travel magazines. A centerpiece or lighting feature can really impress your guests while setting your establishment apart from the competition. In many hotels, the lobby can be one of the biggest spaces to light. Smaller lights may seem to get lost in such a large area, whereas bigger statement pieces can still draw the eye and look breathtaking and luxurious. The best way to create a feeling of height and space is to cluster a large ceiling and use different height to create additional levels of interest. If your hotel has particularly beautiful moldings or ceiling details, then directional lighting could make the ceiling a focal point for guests.

Adaptable Light

Lighting solutions need to be particularly versatile in hotel lobbies because they will be seen at all hours of the day and night. When a hotel has larger windows, let in as much natural light as possible by tying back curtains and raising the blinds, allowing your statement ceiling lighting to become more decorative during the day. Let your lobby lighting really shine at night with dashes of small LEDs to lend a little sparkle to dark corners, large chandeliers can take center stage, and wall and picture lights can draw attention to interesting architectural details or artwork. For more information on hotel lighting in general, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us.

Why does Custom Lighting matter?

There’s a lot you need to consider when designing the lighting for a hospitality business. It needs to create an atmosphere that fits with the theme of your business while providing a healthy balance between natural and artificial lighting.

Too Bright is not Nice

You first need to identify the purpose of the lighting first before you design the lighting system. This will ensure that both the illumination and the style fit with what it was intended to do. It will help your guests and customers to feel comfortable in your venue, which will entice them to come back.

Different Lighting Styles

For specific lighting tasks like a casino table, the illumination needs to be adequate and the glare needs to be minimized. This is to make sure that the table is well-lit but not so bright as to distract the player from the high stake game.

For a restaurant, you need to make sure that the lighting is just enough that the customers can read the menus and see the food. This doesn’t mean that you should just make the light as bright as possible. Too much light can ruin the atmosphere of the entire venue, not to mention that the customers can be extremely annoyed with the glare from their silverware.

If you want to create a romantic outdoor ambience, for example, instead of using an overhead light, you can get enough lighting from a candle or a small table lamp. If you need more light, you can add more lighting in the general area with no customers to keep the atmosphere coherent. For an event where people need to be moving around in a room, like a gathering or a ball, for instance, the lighting needs to be flexible to emphasize the events that are taking place in the room with the main chandelier as the primary source of light.

For a performance hall, on the other hand, the lighting needs to be mobile and it should offer a plethora of different options to fit with the performance. The light should move with the performance to single out a solo performer or emphasize the cohesion of the movements of the entire show.

As you can see there more to lighting design than randomly placing lamps and bulbs everywhere. The key is that the lighting needs to not stand out, instead, it should emphasize the appealing elements of the venue discreetly. If you notice the lighting, it usually means that there’s something wrong with it.

Custom Lighting Design

If you can’t find the specific type of lighting you’re looking for, you might need to work with a professional lighting design to push your hospitality business to the next level. They can offer you educated advice on how to make the most out of the venue and bring the design elements together in a natural way. Get in touch with PTY Lighting today! We’d love to help.

Hotels can be incredibly expensive to run and hoteliers all over the world are always looking for ways to cut costs and improve their bottom line without sacrificing the guest experience that they are able to offer. One major area where you could stand to decrease costs quite significantly is your lighting. Energy costs are always increasing. The public’s awareness of sustainability is also growing – with it, their desire to support businesses that minimize their energy use.

Many hotels have lighting solutions that take up almost half of their overall electricity consumption. There are areas that have to be illuminated around the clock – the exterior, the entryway, the lobby, and the corridors. By upgrading to a modern energy-efficient lighting solution, you could be saving money twenty-four hours a day. That being said, we understand that there are many other things to worry about other than money. Sure, you want a cost-effective lighting solution. But you also want something that is effective and will add to the overall guest experience rather than detracting from it. LED lights can do just that. If you’re considering upgrading to a custom LED lighting solution, here are some things you may find useful:

1 – Start with a plan

Any major change should start with a plan. A great lighting system isn’t only made up of bulbs and fixtures. It also involves natural light, color schemes, and special attention to guest comforts.

Functionality is key and you have to ensure that the lights you install are suited for the use of the area. What your guests need in their bedrooms will not be the same as what your staff needs in the kitchen. There are three general lighting types that you’ll have to pay attention to: ambient lighting, task lighting, and accent lighting. Lights classified as ambient lighting are able to illuminate indoor and outdoor areas for visibility. Task lighting can be offered by bedside lamps, table lamps, and bathroom mirror lamps. They offer extra illumination when people need to do things. Accent lighting is more aesthetic. It draws attention to particular areas such as a painting on the wall.

While you plan your lighting, you will have to think about the needs and uses of each room and then outline the components that will be required to meet those needs.

2 – Use natural light to your advantage

Natural lighting is undoubtedly the best type of lighting you could enjoy because it is not only beautiful but it is free. Take advantage of natural light by daylighting. Many people choose to construct hotels, homes, and other places with windows facing the north because it offers pleasant natural light throughout the day. South-facing windows do too but they may let in more heat. Windows in the east and the west catch full blast of the sun at sunrise and sunset respectively and may let in too much heat if they are not well-insulated.

If you are considering making the natural light a bigger part of your lighting solution, it’s worth taking some time to consider your heating and cooling costs. More windows often mean more places for heat to move in and out. There are times when the increase in heating or cooling costs is more than the amount you save on lighting.

3 – Optimize your color scheme

The colors that you choose for your walls can make quite a bit of difference in your lighting. Light colors and reflecting surfaces will make the most of your lighting so you don’t have to use as much energy. You may even get by on pure natural light for most of the day.

4 – Invest in light management control systems

Timers, sensors, and keycards that cut power to rooms when nobody is inside can save quite a lot of energy. That being said, it’s important to choose bulbs that are made to be turned on and off frequently, as some wear out quickly if they are switched on and off very often. Make intelligent lighting systems a part of your overall lighting strategy to reduce wasting energy in areas with intermittent use.

5 – Choose newer technology

Advancements in technology have yielded bulbs and lighting products that are a lot more energy-efficient compared to their traditional counterparts. Incandescent lamps, for example, are incredibly energy-hungry and will cost a lot of money to run. Fluorescent tubes and compact fluorescent lamps are better choices, but even they are getting outdated compared to light-emitting diodes, better known as LED. LED lights are energy-efficient, don’t produce a lot of heat, and have a very long life. There are so many LED options on the market nowadays too so you can choose whatever color temperature you like. You can even get dimmable lights. Although LED lights require a larger capital investment, you don’t need to change them nearly as often. This will allow you to save more money in the long run.

Lighting matters more than you’d think

A great lighting solution allows you to decrease energy consumption and therefore costs. It will also cut down on maintenance costs because you don’t have to change bulbs as often. Your guests will enjoy the enhanced experience and the better lighting quality. Plus, you’ll be able to use your sustainable lighting as a selling point of your hotel. What better way to upgrade your hotel and save costs while not sacrificing the comfort of your guests?