Hotels, estates and venues
Signage that belongs to the interior
Wayfinding for five-star hotels and country house estates, designed with your architect and installed by our own teams around your guests.
The guest experience
Success is how rarely a guest has to ask
Hotel signage answers a guest's questions before they have had to ask one. Which floor is my room on? Where is the spa? Which door for the wedding? With self check-in spreading, guests are expected to find their own way more than ever, and in a business run on reviews, a lost guest at eleven at night is rarely a small complaint.
The usual brief is to make the signage less visible. Most hotels do carry more signs than the building needs, so we agree with the instinct. The answer is fewer signs, better placed, each one carrying exactly what the next decision requires.
Wayfinders is a wayfinding specialist. We design, manufacture and install the whole system ourselves, under one roof.
Every extra sign is an admission that the last one didn't work.
The Marker Hotel, Dublin. A floor number and its room ranges at the lift.
What a hotel system carries
From the gate to the bedroom door, and behind it
A hotel is several businesses sharing one address. Each layer has its own public, and each gets its own answer.
Arrival and grounds
On an estate the grounds are the building. Entrance markers, junctions and car parks are sized for a driver at 40 km/h and a guest walking to dinner, using the same names.
Room numbering
Numbered from the floor, odds and evens held to one side through every wing, ranges stated at each decision point, and legible at arm's length under warm, low light.
Floor identification
One oversized numeral in the lift lobby, read from inside the car as the doors open. It reads as architecture, so it sits comfortably with the interior designer.
Restaurant, bar, spa and events
Found by a resident coming out of a lift and by someone in off the street. Event floors get one confident directional read for the whole crowd arriving at ten to nine.
Materials specified like ironmongery
Brass, bronze, timber, back-painted glass, engraved and hand-filled. Matched to the door furniture and chosen to age the way the rest of the interior ages.
Discreet, and still accessible
We specify by light reflectance value so a luxury palette still clears the Part M and BS 8300 baseline, with tactile and braille identification for accessible rooms, WCs and lift lobbies.
Back of house
Escape routes to TGD B and ISO 7010, fire-action notices in every bedroom, plant and riser labelling, and kitchen and housekeeping signage a new member of staff reads at a glance.
Case study · Country house estate
Carton House
Engraved brass in an eighteenth-century house
We worked with MDO Architects on wayfinding for Carton House in Co. Kildare, one of Ireland's finest country house hotels. Starting from the architectural plans, we studied how guests move through the hotel and its grounds, then designed a premium system in black and gold to match the interiors and exteriors.
Directories carry gilded lettering on dark grounds with brass borders, and bedroom corridors get engraved brass plates. Each still clears the contrast a modern standard asks for. Installation on silk, patterned wallpaper and period joinery meant fixing once, correctly, with guests in the building.
Case study · City hotel
The Marker Hotel, Dublin
Black and gold on Grand Canal Square
Working with architects McCauley Daye O'Connell and the client, we created a classic bespoke range of signs in black and gold to complement the modern aesthetic of The Marker. The system guides guests through the building to its amenities, including the popular rooftop bar overlooking the Grand Canal and Dublin city centre.
Floor numerals in the brand's gold are scaled like furniture in the lift lobbies. Room ranges replace room names at decision points, and named meeting rooms are cut straight onto the wall at a size that holds its own beside the artwork.
How we work
Delivered without disturbing your guests
Most hotel work happens in a building that is already trading. Our process keeps the decisions on paper, where they cost nothing, and the disruption off the floor.
01Survey and plans
We start from your architectural plans and walk the guest journey on site, from the gate to the bedroom door, recording sightlines, headroom and finishes the plans can't show.
02Names and numbering first
One agreed name per room, used identically on the sign, the reservation, the function sheet and the website. It is cheapest to fix before anything is made.
03Design with your designers
Our in-house architects and graphic designers work to your brand and your interior scheme. Designers talking to designers is why our packages average 1.8 rounds to approval.
04Sample the real finish
Brass, bronze and bespoke colours can't be judged from a specification line, so key signs are previewed in the real material before anything is cut.
05Make and install
Made to the system we designed and fitted by our own teams, room by room and floor by floor, to your occupancy and events calendar.
06Certify and support
Compliance certified at handover, a 10-year warranty, and replacements specified from the record when a room is renamed or a sign is damaged.
Track record
Trusted in more than ten five-star hotels
Hospitality clients include
- The Marker Hotel
- Carton House
- Actons Hotel, Kinsale
Opening, refurbishing or rebranding?
Talk to us while the room names, the numbering logic and the finishes schedule are still on paper. Send us your plans and we'll come back with a design approach, a programme and a price for the whole system.
Email us your plans. We'll handle the rest.